Article Details

The collapse of the Soviet Empire faced the newly-independent countries of Central Asia with the daunting and unexpected challenge of managing their own borders. These were both the so-called 'internal borders' between themselves and the 'external borders' with China, Iran, Afghanistan etc. As the internal borders had previously been purely administrative they cut through many linguistic, ethnic, cultural and geographical lines, not to mention the problems caused by a clutch of illogical enclaves. The border facilities inherited from the Soviet era were totally inadequate and the border guards ill-trained. Accordingly the EU launched two technical assistance programmes, BOMCA and CADAP, which are described in detail in the article.

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