Yet another standoff over disputed segments of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border has intensified tensions among locals, various media outlets reported on April 23.

Residents of a Kyrgyz village, Ak-Sai, reportedly blocked a road traversing the locality and vandalised several Tajik vehicles. In turn, reported RFE/RL, Tajik men broke a window of a car with a Kyrgyz licence plate. The tensions later resulted in Tajik men forcibly taking an eight-year-old Kyrgyz boy to the Tajik side of the border. The boy was returned 30 minutes later. More than 50 local Kyrgyz residents demonstrated in Ak-Sai over the incident.

The chaos comes several weeks after a standoff between Kyrgyz and Tajik residents of the area saw two Tajik men shot dead and dozens injured. The violent clash took place after Kyrgyzstan restarted the construction of a controversial road in the disputed locality.

Kyrgyzstan has been attempting to build a new stretch of a road on the territory for years—it has had to repeatedly stop and restart work during attempts of Kyrgyz and Tajik authorities to reach a border delineation agreement. Towards one-half of the 976-kilometre border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan remains undelineated.

Many border areas in Central Asian former Soviet republics have been disputed since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. The situation is particularly complex near numerous exclaves in the volatile Ferghana Valley, where the borders of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan meet.