The Uzbekistan–Tajikistan border minefields are the result of Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

's unilateral decision to indiscriminately mine

Land mine

A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....

 rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 areas along its border region with Tajikistan

Tajikistan

Tajikistan , officially the Republic of Tajikistan , is a mountainous landlocked country in Central Asia. Afghanistan borders it to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kyrgyzstan to the north, and China to the east....

. Aimed at hindering drug trafficking and cross-border infiltrations of terrorists of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a militant Islamist group formed in 1991 by the Islamic ideologue Tahir Yuldashev, and former Soviet paratrooper Juma Namangani—both ethnic Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley...

, but the mines have caused many civilian casualties. Uzbekistan asserts that it is placing mines in its territory, but so far not all the boundaries between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have been delineated. By 2004 Tajikistan and Uzbekistan had settled almost 86% of their 1,283-km border dispute following the collapse of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 in 1991.

Opinions on the minefields

• International Committee of the Red Cross
  International Committee of the Red Cross
  The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...
  
   - The former head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Tajikistan, George Gunz, said "Any government taking such steps must inform the population of mine locations and types of mines." He said that all international humanitarian norms were being violated so long as the mine locations were not marked, posing a constant threat to the lives of civilians living in border areas. Gunz said that such incidents would continue until governments agreed to sign the Ottawa Convention prohibiting the use of antipersonnel mines.

• Uzbekistan
  Uzbekistan
  Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
  
  's defence minister, Qodyr Pulatov, has defended his country's actions: "All mines laid have been marked with special plates warning of danger," (an assertion Tajik authorities in Dushanbe
  Dushanbe
  -Economy:Coal, lead, and arsenic are mined nearby in the cities of Nurek and Kulob allowing for the industrialization of Dushanbe. The Nurek Dam, the world's highest as of 2008, generates 95% of Tajikistan's electricity, and another dam, the Roghun Dam, is planned on the Vakhsh River...
  
   dismiss after recent official missions to the area failed to locate any such notices).

See also

• Uzbekistan-Tajikistan relations
• Uzbek-Kyrgyzstan barrier‎
• Uzbek-Afghanistan barrier‎