there is nothing more insane than the Tajikistan/Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan border lines around the Fergana valley.
the Kyrgyz-Uzbek split kinda makes sense in principle, but then there's the exclaves and it's like, well, that's clearly insane
the fact that Tajikistan reaches up and over the mountains to just very chill like have some towns at the mouth of the Fergana valley is obviously the most bonkers part of all of this
what i don't fully know is the extent to which the existing "ethnic map" reflects "where these people have been for a long time" or "biased counts by nation states" or "minorities got the boot" or some of all of the above
this map makes it look like the national borders are good proxies for actual ethnic/linguistic communities, but my question is: is this true? how distinct are these groups on the ground? and are the lines tidy because minorities got kicked out?
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