Borders and Orders in Central Asia

Central Asia is characterised by state fragility and associated with drug traffic and instability. Social Orders and the defining borders have often changed in this region. What are the functions of borders today in the light of parallel state and nation building processes? How do borders impact the attitudes of the borderland population? And most notably: What are the drivers of and the constraints for transborder interactions? The author analyses these questions along the rather new state border between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and at border strips between these states and Afghanistan -- once separating two geopolitical regions. The authoritarian regimes in Tajikistan and, even more so, in Uzbekistan contain their state building projects against allegedly destabilising influences from abroad. However, in border regions far from state influence interdependencies may also be the basis for legal interactions.