Kazak Scavengers Risk Death

Poverty and confusion over the exact location of the Kazak-Uzbek border are being blamed for spate of deaths on a former Soviet army testing ground.

Abdugapar Kadyrbaev, 27, from the Kazygurt village of Kakpak, accidentally detonated a shell on January 7, the latest local resident to fall victim to explosives while looking for scrap metal to sell.

Kadyrbaev had unknowingly strayed from the decommissioned Kazak side of the former Turkestan military area into the Uzbek part of the range, which is still used for tank practice.

The military area was divided between the two former Soviet republics in a demarcation agreement drawn up in the Kazak capital Astana in September 2002.

As yet, the border exists only within the demarcation agreement, and the inhabitants of the two republics are none the wiser as to where the frontier actually lies. The situation is complicated by a complete lack of danger signs to warn residents of tank fire and unexploded shells on the Uzbek side.

Timur Musaev, deputy head of the Kazygurt internal affairs department, told IWPR that an

Investigation into the accident was now under way but that the criminal charges were unlikely to follow as the man had died on Uzbek soil.

"We notified our counterparts in the Bostandyk district office, and a group of Uzbek police officers arrived on January 10 to examine the area where the death occurred. In my experience - and I've been working in the Kazygurt region for two and a half years - this is the fourth victim at the testing ground," he said.

While Kazakstan carried out an intensive sweep of the area after two young boys were killed in 2001 - and maintains that no further unexploded material remains on its territory - the lack of a clearly defined border means that many lives are still at risk.

"This is not the first tragedy in our village," Kakpak resident Ibrai told IWPR. "It is the eighth human death I can remember over the past decade - not to mention the numerous cows and sheep that are killed by explosives.

"When the two boys from our village died there, mine experts checked the Kazak part of the testing ground. No one looked at the Uzbek side - and no one knows how many explosives are still there."

The irony of the situation is not lost on the villagers. For years, the Soviet army provided locals with their entire livelihoods - Kakpak operated as a collective farm providing food and goods for the military. Turkestan was a very important base, as it was responsible for the security of the entire southern border.

But the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the army was disbanded, leaving the collective without a base to serve, and plunging residents into terrible poverty.

More than 4,000 people still live there today - almost all of whom are jobless. The younger generation has long since left for the regional capitals in search of work, leaving just the elderly, the infirm and those with young families.

With so few prospects, many choose to risk the dangerous journey into the military zone in search of non-ferrous metals to sell for as little as one US dollar per kilo. When they do find an unexploded shell, they take on the perilous task of disarming it. It's not known how many people have died or been severely injured in the process.

The authorities have been trying to stop this activity for a number of years. Timur Musaev, deputy head of the Kazygurt District Department of Internal Affairs, told IWPR that he talked to the village elders only last year and convinced them not to let young people near the testing ground. "Everyone understands that it's dangerous even just to walk there," he said.

Unemployed Asylbek says he will carry on looking for metal to support his wife, child and his four younger brothers and sisters. "I've been doing it for four years now, although I don't bother to disarm the shells I find because there's enough metal lying around already.

"But because the shells are mainly rusty and covered in earth, you can't always identify what you've found - so there will always be the danger of an explosion."

Olga Dosybieva is an Interfax correspondent in South Kazakstan