page_title: Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Afghanistan–Uzbekistan border / History
caption_attribution_description: English: “Withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan”. Last Soviet troop column crosses Soviet border after leaving Afghanistan. Русский: «Вывод советских войск из Афганистана: Мы уходим». Последняя колонна советских войск из Афганистана пересекает границу СССР. Афганистан
context_page_description: The Afghanistan-Uzbekistan border is 144 km in length and runs from the tripoint with Turkmenistan to the tripoint with Tajikistan along the Amu Darya river. It is by far the shortest of Uzbekistan's external borders.
context_section_description: The border was inherited from the old Soviet Union-Afghan border which largely took its current shape during the 19th century Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia known as the Great Game. With the Russian Empire having conquered the Khanate of Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara, and with the British Empire controlling the British Raj, the two powers agreed to leave Afghanistan as an independent buffer state between them.
  In 1873 Britain and Russia agreed on a rough formulation of the border, with the Amu Darya declared to be the border going east from the vicinity of the village of Khwaja Salar to Lake Zorku, with the Wakhan Corridor to remain in Afghanistan. The western section of the border (i.e. the bulk of the modern Afghan-Turkmen boundary) was to be determined at a later date by a boundary commission.
  Tensions mounted as the Russians expanded further into what is now Turkmenistan in the early 1880s, reaching a crisis with the Panjdeh incident (near Sandykachi in what is now Turkmenistan), an area claimed by Afghanistan. Discussions calmed the situation and a joint Anglo-Russian boundary commission demarcated the boundary as it is today over the period 1885-88. As the village of Khwaja Salar could no longer be identified it was agreed that the boundary should meet the Amu Darya in the vicinity of Khamiab, Afghanistan.
  The eastern-most section of the border (now forming part of the Afghan-Tajik boundary) was not finally delimited until 1893-95, with the Afghans agreeing to waive any claims to lands north the Amu Darya. This agreement also stipulated the position of the land border in section east of Lake Zorkul up to China, with a series of boundary pillars subsequently erected.
  In 1921 a Soviet-Afghan treaty was signed whereby Russia agreed “to hand over to Afghanistan the frontier districts which belonged to the latter in the last century, observing the principles of justice and self-determination of the population inhabiting the same." However this treaty was never implemented, and was explicitly annulled by the Frontier Agreement of 1946, which kept the boundary as it was, with riverine islands to be subsequently allocated by a joint commission.
  In 1979 Soviet troops of the 40th Army crossed the border at Termez via a series of pontoons as part of the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, en route to Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul. They later constructed the Friendship Bridge, which officially opened in 1982, however its strategic importance led to it being a target of the Mujahideen insurgency.  The Soviet army left Afghanistan via the bridge in 1989.
  The bridge was closed from 1997-2001 due to Uzbek fears over Taliban insurgency, before re-opening to allow aid in following their fall in 2001. As of 2018 it remains the only fixed crossing between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
caption: Soviet forces withdraw across the Amu Darya, 1989
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "b'58833 01.10.1989 \\xcf\\xee\\xf1, ... ]", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2012:01:19 14:08:52", "Image Artist": "b'\\xc0. \\xd1\\xee\\xeb\\xee\\xec\\xee\\xed\\xee\\xe2'", "Image ExifOffset": "315", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "467", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5316", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "1989:10:01 01:00:00", "EXIF SubSecTime": "396", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "0", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "749", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1024"}