And so, with a few pen strokes, one of the Soviet Union’s most pernicious legacies – the tangled borders of Central Asia – has been resolved.

On March 13, the presidents of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan met in Bishkek to sign an agreement that definitively establishes the exact contours of the 1,000-kilometre-long border between their two nations. This brings an end to a three-decade season of border tensions and periodic unrest among the region’s five nations.

Less than three years ago, the idea that these men would be sitting down to sign a treaty, let alone reopening crossings and talking about economic integration, would have seemed unthinkable.

In 2022, the two countries were not negotiating; they were fighting. Hundreds were killed, villages were shelled, and for the first time in Central Asian history, a combat drone was used in a border conflagration.

Nobody speaks of that episode anymore. After they put their signatures to the demarcation treaty, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov and his Tajik counterpart, Emomali Rahmon, embraced and re-embraced four times.

Their accompanying delegations jumped to their feet and burst into applause that lasted for the best part of a minute.

“We have today demonstrated that from now on and forever, the Kyrgyz-Tajik border will stand as a border of eternal friendship between two fraternal nations and peoples,” Japarov said.

This is not just about these two countries. More is to come later this month.

“With today’s signing of the Tajik-Kyrgyz border agreement together with the esteemed Sadyr Nurgozhoevich [Japarov], we will move soon to finalising a treaty between Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan regarding the tripoint of our state borders,” Rahmon said in his post-signing speech.

The presidents appeared somehow subdued for much of the morning.

Rahmon arrived at the Ala-Archa presidential complex in a solitary car accompanied by a horseback ceremonial guard. He was greeted with another folkloristic sight in the grounds of the complex: rows of traditional Kyrgyz honour troops dressed in red tunics and leather armour and bearing round shields and long spears.

The men squinted into the bright early spring sun as a military band performed abbreviated versions of the national anthems. With that formality performed, Rahmon and Japarov went through the motions of shaking hands with all the senior representatives of one another’s delegations.

Moods visibly eased after the treaty was signed. There is now a sense of anticipation in the air.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are the region’s two weakest economies. The mutual sealing of the borders after the fighting in September 2022 was another blow to their prosperity.

That is why the reopening of border crossings in a ceremony carried out after the signing of documents bore significance beyond symbolism. It was a crucial step toward reviving trade and restoring livelihoods.

The heads of the border services rose from their seats in the Ala-Archa press hall and marched toward the front of the room. Standing before the raised stage where Japarov and Rahmon were seated, they snapped to attention and, in turn, barked a formal request to authorise the reopening of the border.

The presidents responded curtly, in Russian: “Permission granted.”

Moments later, on giant screens in the hall, a large crowd of celebrating pedestrians could be seen surging through the Kairagach checkpoint, one of the crossings linking Kyrgyzstan’s southern Batken province to Tajikistan’s northern Sughd province.

Rahmon described the stakes in concrete terms, declaring that Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan had agreed to push bilateral trade to $500 million. The deadline for reaching that figure is 2030.

Were that to happen, it would be a staggering leap from the $12 million recorded in 2024.

The reopening of border crossings, suggested Rahmon, is just the first step toward rebooting relations.

“During the negotiations, we discussed the prospects for industrial cooperation as a factor in the further expansion of economic ties between our two countries,” he said. “We emphasized the importance of mutually beneficial use of transit and transport opportunities to ensure the sustainable development of our countries and the region.”

Beyond the headline border business, a rash of other agreements were inked, including on water and energy access, road infrastructure, agriculture, industry, customs cooperation, and financial transparency. Rahmon announced that there would soon be direct flights between Bishkek and Dushanbe, and also between Bishkek and Tajikistan’s second city, Khujand.

Reaching this point has not been without political challenges.

Tajikistan’s authoritarian system is so severe that nobody there would have dared to object to this treaty.

Matters are marginally more complicated in Kyrgyzstan. Japarov’s rule, which began in October 2020, has been flavoured by an increasing turn to heavy-handedness. But this deal nevertheless sparked some faint squeals of protest.

Earlier this month, one lawmaker Sultanbai Ayzhigitov complained that Kyrgystan had given away too much.

In one major concession, Tajikistan will take ownership of a whole Kyrgyz village, Dostuk. Residents were hastily evacuated with promises they would receive large parcels of land in return.

Geopolitics experts studying Central Asia from afar have long predicted that disagreements over how to share water resources was likely to spark a region-wide war. The Kyrgyz-Tajik agreement to jointly manage the strategic Golovnoi spigot, a control node for precious irrigation water, should in theory make that prospect more remote. But Kyrgyz critics complain in muted tones that total control over that asset should not have been volunteered so easily.

Another source of anxiety in Kyrgyzstan was the decision to grant Tajikistan eased and automatic passage between the Tajik mainland and their Vorukh exclave. The worry is that should ties once again sour, Tajikistan would be in a strong position to annex huge swathes of land west of Vorukh.

Ayzhigitov’s nod to some of these concerns earned him instantaneous expulsion from the Yiman Nuru party’s faction in parliament. President Japarov dismissed the MP’s criticism as “pure demagoguery.”

Ahead of the signing ceremony at the Ala-Archa complex, Ayzhigitov tried once more to raise his objections in parliament. His request to deliver a 10-minute speech from the central podium of the Jogorku Kenesh was supported by 19 out of the 73 lawmakers present.

But Parliament speaker Nurlanbek Turgunbek uulu summarily denied the appeal.

“Today, once again, there will be no microphone for you,” he told Ayzhigitov.