This is Central Asia. And this region

here that I'm highlighting is known as

the Forgana Valley. Home to about 17

million people. It's by far the most

densely populated part of Central Asia

and encompasses about 1 in five people

across the whole region. And the borders

across it are potentially the most janky

borders that you can find anywhere in

the world today. The Forgana Valley is

divided between three different

countries today. Usbekiststan,

Kyrgystan, and Tajikhstan. and they all

zigzag twist and intermingle together in

what is certainly the worst example of

border gore on the planet. There are

super weird artificial peninsulas of

territory that barely even connect to

the rest of their home countries. like

this peninsula of Usuzbekiststan around

the town of Na that plunges in Akystan

and is only connected to the rest of

Usbekiststan by an ultra narrow 360 m

wide chicken's neck or these even

weirder borders of Usuzbekistan in the

far east of the country that are

theoretically contiguous around this

body of water but in practice are

actually a series of multiple tiny

Usuzbck exclaves on the wrong side of

the water surrounded by Kyrgyzstan

there's these weird large arms or

branches of all three countries that

twist and knot together in the center of

the valley. And then to make things even

stranger, there were no fewer than eight

exclaves of territory of these countries

that are completely isolated from the

mainlands and geographically surrounded

by the other countries. Six of these

exclaves are all located within

Kyrgyzstan and are found within

Kyrgystan's southwestern arm that's

known as the Batkin region. One of the

most visually complicated border regions

on the planet. Two of these exclaves

belong to Tajjikhstan and four of them

belong to Usuzbekiststan. Some of them

are so small that they're nearly

irrelevant, such as this little exclave

at Tajjikstan surrounded by Kyrgystan

that's mostly just a segment of a road

in a creek and a single farm. While

others are major and hotly contentious

population centers home to tens of

thousands of people like this larger

exclave of Tajjikstan that's surrounded

by Kyrgystan that's known as Veroo. This

exclave is densely populated at home to

around 45,000 people and it's probably

the single most contentious piece of

territory in Central Asia. With no

access to the mainland of Tajjikhstan,

the 45,000 residents trapped within

Veruk have been marginalized, isolated,

and impoverished surrounded by Kyrgystan

for decades. While Tajjinkistan has

historically rejected that it should

even be an exclave in the first place,

claiming a narrow land corridor for

itself from the mainland to it across

the internationally recognized territory

of Kyrgystan that Kyrgystan has fiercely

rejected, leading to multiple modern

conflicts between them. Meanwhile,

Usuzbekiststan has four of their own

exclaves in the Bkin region surrounded

by Kyrgystan as well. Two of them, Chon

Carara and Jania are relatively small

and located nearby to the Usuzbekiststan

mainland, while the two others are very

large and a lot stranger. Shohimdon is

deeper within the Kyrgyzstan mainland

and is home to around 5,000 people,

while the So District is probably the

strangest border example in the whole

region. It's a large exclave of

Usuzbekiststan that's entirely

surrounded by Kyrgystan and home to

around 80,000 people. And yet nearly all

of those 80,000 people are ethnic to

Jets who are neither Usuzbck, the

country that they belong to, nor

curious, the country they're surrounded

by. Complicating things further still,

there's one more exclave of Kystans

around the village of Barack that's

completely surrounded by Usbekiststan.

And there's another long narrow exclave

of Tajjikstans with a small village

inside that's also completely surrounded

by Usuzbekiststan. And then to add on

even more complexity, there's a very

high degree of the ethnic borders here

overlapping with the political borders.

There are very large numbers of Tajjiks

who live across the political border in

Usuzbekiststan. [music]

And then there are very large numbers of

Usuzbcks who live across the political

borders in both Tajjikhstan and Kystan.

These confusing and intermingled borders

have produced multiple conflicts in

Central Asia between all three of these

countries. They were originally drawn up

by the Soviet Union when the whole

region was under their control across

most of the 20th century, but they

probably weren't drawn this way by them

for the reason that you might already

think. To understand why this border

gore exists in Central Asia today and

why it's been so problematic for decades

since the Soviet Union's collapse, it

helps to begin with an understanding of

some of this region's history before the

Soviet Union took it over.

Geographically, the Fragana Valley is a

large green oasis that's about the size

of New Jersey, located smack dab in the

center of otherwise dry, arid grasslands

and steps. Encompassed within mountain

ranges surrounding it on all sides, save

for the west, [music] the valley is lush

and ideal for agriculture because it's

fed by two rivers that originate from

glacial runoff and snow melt higher up

in the mountains around it. The Seiria

and the Keradaria. At the crossroads of

multiple civilizations and located

directly along the historical Silk Road

trade route, the valley has been

considered prime real estate for

thousands of years and has been

variously controlled and influenced at

different times by the Greeks, Persians,

Turks, Chinese, Mongols, Russians, and a

whole bunch of others. By the early 19th

century, however, the Fana Valley was

broadly unified under the control of the

Ko and Connet and contained an extremely

diverse population. There were Persian

and Turkish speaking senitary

communities who practiced agriculture

and were highly intermingled that lived

in the valley who were collectively both

referred to as sarts. [music]

And then there were nomadic Turko Mongol

tribes around the valley's edges and

mountains who often invaded and settled

among the Sarts and intermingled with

them as well. Throughout this time frame

before the later arrival of the Russians

and the eventual establishment of the

Soviet Union, there was really no modern

concept of ethnicity or nationalism that

was present within the Forgana Valley.

And there was no clear way to make

scientific distinctions between the

peoples in the valley. The people were

very often multilingual and had numerous

intermingled ancestries. And so most

people's identities were more based

around the sedentary nomadic divide,

their tribe or clan or their religion,

which in most but not all cases was

Islam. It was a highly convoluted and

intermingled stew of languages,

lifestyle, class, ancestry, laws, and

religion in the valley. And then

gradually between the 1850s and 1870s,

it was all invaded, conquered, and

annexed into the Tsarist Russian Empire.

Now, after they conquered Central Asia,

the Tsarist Russian authorities divided

the whole area into just two large

administrative regions that were

effectively governed as colonies. the

governor of the step that broadly

encompassed most of modern-day

Kazakhstan and the governor of Turkstan

that encompassed most of the rest of

Central Asia but with two major

exceptions wedged in between its two

different halves the conet of Ka and the

emirate of Bkhara which were each

granted internal autonomy and were

theoretically independent protectorates

of the Russian Empire complete with

their own con and amir though Russia

still ultimately controlled their

foreign and military policies

broadly thesarist authority Authorities

allowed a high degree of autonomy in

Central Asia and generally left their

people to manage their own affairs until

the First World War arrived. [music] In

1916, the Tsarist regime, facing

manpower shortages on the front lines,

expanded military conscription to the

empire's Muslim inhabitants for the

first time, which triggered a massive

revolt amongst the Muslims in Central

Asia that began within the Forgana

Valley and which came to be known as the

Basmachi movement. The revolt quickly

adopted a panuric Islamist and

secessionist character as local elites

in the Fragana Valley had a tendency at

the time to identify at least partially

with Turk identity in an attempt to copy

the Turkish nationalism that was also

thriving at the time in the dying

Ottoman Empire. After the October

Revolution came in 1917 and the Bolevik

seized power in Russia, they inherited

this revolt that was already raging in

Central Asia and the Fragana Valley. And

so they moved in to restore order and

put it down. After the Red Army took

over the city of Kokand in early 1918,

one of the largest cities in the Forgana

Valley, they perpetrated a massacre that

killed as many as 25,000 of the city's

inhabitants, which only served to rally

the support for the Basmachi revolt in

the valley even further. A brutal

yearslong guerilla and conventional war

ensued in the Forgana Valley between the

Red Army and the Basmachi rebels that

ultimately resulted in the confirmed

deaths of more than 9,000 Red Army

soldiers and probably tens of thousands

of the valley's local inhabitants. After

more than 6 years of fighting, the

Bolevixs would eventually manage to

largely suppress the revolt in the

Forgana Valley by 1923.

And meanwhile, the year previously in

1922, they would also proclaim the

establishment of the Soviet Union.

Initially, the previously autonomous

connet of Ka and Emirate of Bkhara saw

the regimes overthrown by locals who

aligned themselves with the Bolsheviks

and voluntarily entered into the Soviet

Union as people Soviet republics or

PSRs. While the former governorate of

the step and governorate of Turkystan

were both initially incorporated into

the new Russian Soviet Federated

Socialist Republic or RSFSR as

autonomous regions known as ASSRS. The

Tyrustan ASSR and the Kyrgystan ASSR

which confusingly was the old name that

the Russians used to refer to the Kazaks

that would later extend to the Kier who

were both largely nomadic groups. Now

almost immediately the Soviets wanted to

redraw these internal administrative

borders that they inherited in Central

Asia. The Soviets viewed these internal

borders as a sort of nonsensical

hodgepodge mix of various peoples and

laws that required and cobbled together

through previous colonial conquests

which they wanted to redraw using what

they considered to be a more rational

and scientific approach based on

ethnographic and demographic data. The

Marxist Leninist ideology of the Soviet

Union had this idea that the former

sprawling Russian Empire should be

rebuilt and developed as a brotherly

union of nations collectively working

together towards a true stateless

communist society in harmony. A union of

Soviet socialist republics, if you will.

The general idea they had was to divide

the country between a series of Soviet

socialist republics or SSRs. Each one

based largely around one of the

country's largest ethnic groups. With

each SSR designed to be as ethnically

homogeneous as possible. So in 1924,

shortly after the Basmachi revolt had

been largely pacified, the Soviets began

the process of drawing the borders for

these new SSRs out of their holdings in

Central Asia. At the time, Joseph Stalin

was serving as the people's commasar of

nationalities in the country. And so it

was largely under his guidance that the

new borders of Central Asia's republics

would be drawn and sorted out. A fact

which has led to a century of mixed

opinions on what Stalin's intentions

actually were. Critics of Stalin and the

Soviet Union at large are repeatedly

accused him of pursuing a policy during

this era of divide and rule.

deliberately drawing the borders in the

Forgana Valley between the New Republics

to be as convoluted and messy as

physically possible in order to ensure

maximum levels of chaos and competition

between them if they ever dared to leave

the Soviet Union which would ultimately

keep them all over dependent on Moscow

for arbitration and disputes and

subservient to the Kremlin. While Stalin

may very well have had these intentions,

it's also true that his task of drawing

accurate and clean ethnic borders across

the complicated matrix of identity that

was present in the Forgana Valley was

going to be virtually impossible for

anybody to actually succeed at, no

matter what their intentions were. In

order to try and establish a clearer

picture of the ethnic demography that

was present in the Forgana Valley, the

Soviets ordered a census to be conducted

in the region. But that was far easier

said than done, especially with the

technology and data that was available

during the 1920s. The census takers had

to conduct their surveys painstakingly

on horseback and doortodoor, which was

especially difficult to gain accurate

information from the Kiraas and Kazak

communities from since up to 60% of

their communities at this time were

still nomadic and had no doors to knock

on. The concept of ethnicity that the

Soviet ethnographers and census takers

brought with them into the Forgana

Valley were still largely foreign

concepts to the people who lived there

in the 1920s as well. Huge numbers of

people who lived there spoke multiple

different languages, had mixed

ancestries, and all lived together in

the same cities and regions intermingled

together. It was so convoluted that

there are several anecdotal examples of

the frustrated Soviet ethnographers

simply demanding residents in cities to

just choose one nationality only for

people within the exact same immediate

family to choose completely different

ones. Ethnic identity was highly fluid

and didn't always fit neatly into the

major nationalities of the region that

the Soviets identified and attempted to

press on everyone. Persian-speaking

sedentary peoples who were grouped

together as Tajjiks and Turkish

speakaking senary peoples who were

grouped together as Usuzbcks and who

used to all be classified collectively

the same as Sarts and nomadic Turk

Mongol people who were grouped together

as Kiras despite the fact that most

people's identities crossed over into

various combinations of all three and

many others. All of this made drawing

accurate borders neatly dividing the

region's nationalities into clean

cohesive geographic areas effectively

impossible. and it's a large part of why

the borders look so janky today. The

Soviets were also incentivized to

encourage the development of local

national identities in the valley like

Tajik, Usuzbck, and Kygis in order to

suppress and divide the unifying

ideologies of panurkism and Islamism in

the region that had spawned the

dangerous Basmachi revolt that they had

just fought so hard to put down. By

encouraging new ideas of regional

nationalism that divided the valley,

they hoped to suppress another unified

revolt like that in the region from ever

happening again. At this time, communist

authority was also not yet strongly

established in Central Asia. So, they

needed to rely on the cooperation of

locals for the border drawing process,

which opened it up to abuse through

corruption and bribes by local officials

who wanted to see their own ancestral

villages or towns incorporated into

their new republics. even if the local

ethnic identity wasn't an exact match.

And while the Soviet authorities wanted

the SSRs they were designing to be as

ethnically homogeneous as possible, they

also wanted them to be as economically

viable as possible as well, which to the

Soviets meant a population of at least 1

million people, a fair allocation of

water resources, and a capital city

connected by rail for each of the SSRs.

So in many cases these economic

considerations were placed ahead of

demographic considerations for the final

borders. Ultimately by the end of 1924

the Bhar and Chlorism PSRs were both

dissolved despite the opposition of

their local communist parties while the

Tyrustan ASSR was partitioned into two

new fullyfledged SSRs. The Turkman SSR

and the Usuzbck SSR which also

encompassed most of the former Bkhara

and Horism PSRs. Initially the USB SSR

included its own new ASSR for the Tajjik

but a few years later in 1929 the Tajjik

ASSR was split off and morphed into its

own fullyfledged SSR as well. At about

the same time in 1929 the Kier's

autonomous oblast was created within the

Russian SFSR. And then more than a

decade after this process began in 1936,

it too was finally separated into its

own fullyfledged SSR along with

Kazakhstan. And with that, the region of

Central Asia under Soviet control was

administratively divided into five new

national SSRs with the Forgana Valley

divided between three of them. the

borders of which were never intended at

the time to eventually become

international borders because nobody who

was drawing them back then ever foresaw

that one day the Soviet Union might

simply cease existing. There were of

course many many controversies and

anomalies related to the drawing of

these national borders by the Soviets

where no borders had previously existed.

The cities of Bhara and Sauand were

primarily inhabited by Tajjik speakers.

But since they were surrounded by

Turkspeaking countryside, they were

placed within Usbekistan to make it all

continuous, which still inflames

passions within Tajjikstan to this day.

Meanwhile, the cities of Tashkent and

Shiment both had a large intermingled

population of Usuzbcks and Europeans,

but were surrounded by a countryside

populated by Kazaks. So Tashkint went to

Usbekiststan while Shimkint went to

Kazakhstan. More confusingly, since the

Kiris people were mostly nomadic, they

made up only tiny percentages of the

urban population within their own

republic. The cities of Osh and

Jalalaban within Kyrgystan, but nearby

to Usbekiststan were both primarily

inhabited by Usuzbcks and Europeans at

the time instead. But the Soviets were

concerned that if they gave the cities

to the Usuzbck SSR, they would lose

their economic hinterlands stretching

out towards the mountains that were

primarily inhabited by the Kiras. While

southern Kyrgystan would also be left

with no significant cities. So the

Soviets gave them both to Kyrgyzstan in

order to avoid any of that from

happening. A decision that would

eventually contribute to large-scale

interethnic violence here many decades

later during our own time in 2010 when

tensions between the Usuzbck and curious

communities in southern Kyrgystan would

flare. For the next 60 plus years, the

Soviets pursued a policy of nation

building within each of these new

Central Asian SSRs that they created,

promoting the distinct ethnic and

national identities within each of them

that they were assigned. The convoluted

process of drawing their borders also

continued on for decades after Stalin's

own death as well. The largest and most

infamous of the exclaves that exist

today, the silk district of

Usuzbekiststan that's surrounded by

Kyrgystan and inhabited almost entirely

by Tajjik wasn't created until 1955,

2 years after Stalin's death. The

reasoning for doing so has never become

entirely clear, at least in English

language sources. As far as I can tell,

there are legends that sulk was lost by

Akira's communist party official during

a card game with his Usuzbck counterpart

and other theories that it was decided

to be given to Usbekiststan because the

main roads in the region connected with

Usbekiststan along the river instead of

with more rugged curious territory to

the east and the west. It's ultimately

never been entirely clear. Many other

revisions to the borders were made as

late as the 1980s, but their convoluted

and intermingled nature never really

mattered much to the Soviets because it

was all part of the same country and

system. These were always designed and

intended by the Soviets to serve as

internal boundaries on paper rather than

as hard international borders in

practice. meaning that all of the weird

little exclaves and enclaves and

twisting borders didn't really matter

since the people of the SSRS could all

freely travel back and forth across them

at will. But then, of course, all of a

sudden, the Soviet Union fell apart and

collapsed in 1991. All of the SSRs in

Central Asia that the Soviets had

created unexpectedly became independent

sovereign nations, and the convoluted

internal borders that were never

intended to be international borders

suddenly became them. For the first time

in probably centuries, the Forgotta

Valley was suddenly left as a

politically divided geographic area

without a strong centralized authority

and instead became home to three brand

new competing states who had to reckon

with the previous decades of nation

building and differing ethnic identities

that had been promoted in each of them

by the Soviets. All three countries

initially cited different maps produced

by the Soviets between the 1920s and

1980s to use for claiming their borders.

And so large segments of all three

states as mutual border areas remained

unclear and non- delineated for decades,

especially around the exclaves. Large

numbers of Tajjiks, Usuzbcks, and Kiris

ended up on the wrong sides of their

respective borders or worse became

entrapped with an enclave surrounded by

rival states as happened with

Tajjikstan's exclave of Aruk surrounded

by Kyrgystan. Usbekiststan's many

ex-claves also surrounded by Kyrgystan

and Kyrgystan and Tajjikstan's exclaves

surrounded by Usuzbekiststan.

Initially, all three countries generally

allowed each other to access their

respective exclaves via roads traversing

over their territories and relations

began calm enough. But then things

started shifting rapidly for the worse

in 1999.

In February of that year, a militant

group that called itself the Islamic

Movement of Usbekistsan or the IMEU

attempted to assassinate the President

of Usbekiststan during a bombing attack,

who they wanted to overthrow so they

could establish their vision of a strict

Islamic state in Usbekistsan. The IMU

was able to take advantage of the

complex and unclear borders in the area

by setting up their base of operations

in the Soul enclave. And over the summer

of 1999, they invaded the surrounding

Baptin region of Kyrgystan, which had an

ethnically Usuzbck majority local

population. They eventually seized

control over the Kieris village of

Barack and took hostages, which prompted

Usuzbekiststan to deploy their own

soldiers to surround the village and lay

siege to it, which is apparently how

Barack became a Kir exclave surrounded

by Usuzbekiststan. During and after this

conflict, Usuzbekiststan began

unilaterally demarcating and sealing off

its borders with Kyrgystan under the

pretext that it was to prevent further

incursions by the IMU. The Usuzbcks

built barbed wire fences, established

checkpoints, and even installed

minefields across large sections of

their border with Kyrgystan across the

Fana Valley. In some cases, advancing

dozens of meters beyond the

international border that was recognized

by Kyrgystan. Most controversially, the

Omecks expanded their barbed wire fences

and minefields around the city of

Barack, even after the IMU militants had

been cleared out from the village,

leaving it behind as a truly entrapped

exclave of Kyrgystan, isolated from the

rest of the country by very hard

borders. They also added in minefields

around their own exclaves within

Kyrgystan like the Silk district where

they claimed the IMU was based in which

especially outraged the Kyrgystan

government after they accused them of

planning landmines outside of Sulk

within Curious territory. The Batkin

conflict in 1999 as it would come to be

known ultimately resulted in the deaths

of nearly 1,200 people largely due to

military combat between the IMU and the

Kyrgystan army. Afterwards, the IMU was

fully pushed back to alternative bases

in Tajjikhstan. After which,

Usbekiststan decided to unilaterally

demarcate their borders with Tajjighstan

as well, using the same kinds of barbed

wire fences and landmines they had

deployed along the Kystan border as

well. Usbekiststan's more hostile

approach to the borders with their

neighbors in the Forgana Valley would

generally continue on for years until

the country's longtime authoritarian

president Islam Karamov would finally

die in 2016 which only then opened up

the path to a dant and restored

relations with Kyrgystan and Tajjikhstan

and a loosening up of the border policy.

Usbekiststan would eventually agree to

finally delineate their border with

Tajjikstan in 2018 and then with

Kyrgystan a few years later in 2022,

steadily getting rid of their barbed

wire fences and minefields along the

borders as well. The agreement between

Usbekiststan and Kyrgystan was

especially notable because it included a

land swap that eliminated the

Kyazakslave of Barack that was trapped

within Usbekistsan. By 2024, the land

swap became permanent. Barack was fully

absorbed and annexed into

Usuzbekiststan, and the vill's 985

residents were transferred and resettled

elsewhere in Kyrgyzstan. Despite this,

Google Maps continues to still show the

Barack exclave existing here as of this

video's production more than a year

later. So, I think this just hasn't been

updated yet by Google for whatever

reason. Nonetheless, the Kristan

Tajikstan border continued remaining

largely undefined while other violent

incidents caused by these complex

borders continued. In 2010, interethnic

violence and riots that erupted between

the Kiras and Usuzbek communities in the

cities of Osh and Jalal Ababad within

Kyrgystan resulted in hundreds to

potentially thousands of deaths and

thousands of destroyed homes. The

lasting legacy of the Soviet Union's

decision to have incorporated what at

the time were the largely Usuzbck

populated cities of Osh and Jalalabad

within Kyrgyzstan nearly a century

previously. And all the while hundreds

of kilometers throughout the Forgana

Valley continued remaining disputed and

non-delineated for decades, especially

between Kyrgystan and Tajjikhstan and

particularly around all the exclaves.

While the violence that erupted between

the Usuzbck and Curious communities in

Osh and Jalalabad in 2010 were large

enough to have captured headlines around

the world. Hundreds of smaller scale

localized skirmishes across the borders,

usually involving soldiers taking a few

pot shots at each other or villagers

throwing stones at one another over

water access and border crossings

continued on for years afterward and

were also happening for years

beforehand. But then things escalated

dramatically between Kystan and

Tajjikhstan's disputed borders in 2021.

A dispute over an important shared water

pumping station on the border near the

Veruko exclave that year exploded into

multiple armed attacks and

confrontations all across the border

between them in the Batkin region of the

Fana Valley with both sides deploying

heavy artillery, drones, mortars, and

attack helicopters against each other.

Particularly heavy fighting took place

to the north of Tajjigstan's Vero

exclave, where more than 40,000 people

remained trapped surrounded by Kystan.

Tajjigstan claimed a land corridor from

their mainland across Kyrgystan to

connect to Veruk which Kyrgystan

disputed while further fighting between

them happened to the west around the

southern strip of disputed territory

between them south of the Tajjik city of

Kujand. 55 people were killed during

this 4-day war between them in 2021 and

hundreds of others were injured. The

borders between the two countries were

completely sealed shut afterwards, and

sporadic clashes in these two disputed

areas between the Tajjik and Kiris

armies continued on for another year

until they erupted into an even deadlier

bout of full-scale fighting again in

September of 2022. For 6 days, the Tajik

and Kiras armies fought against one

another in the same disputed area as

they had the previous year in 2021,

using their full arsenals available to

them and both blaming the other for

restarting the violence. This time,

nearly 150 soldiers were killed in

action and more than 100,000 civilians

on the Kystan side of the border were

forcefully displaced and temporarily

evacuated before a ceasefire was finally

agreed upon. These bouts of high-profile

fighting between Kyrgystan and

Tajjikhstan in 2021 and 2022 wrecked

relations between the two countries. And

with the borders between them sealed,

the 40,000 plus people living in the

Veruk exclave were unable to leave and

visit any of their friends and families

in the rest of Tajjikhstan for years as

a consequence. But after years of

contentious talks and negotiations that

followed, Kyrgystan and Tajjikhstan

eventually announced in early 2025 that

their relations would be fully restored.

Their borders would be reopened again

for the first time in 4 years. And then

most spectacularly, they had agreed to

resolve all of their outstanding border

disputes and to fully delineate their

borders with each other. They agreed to

a few land swaps with each other and to

resolve Tajjikstan's desire for a land

bridge to the Veroo exclave. They agreed

on establishing a neutral corridor here

that neither side would ultimately

control, enabling Tajjikhstan access to

Vook without Kyrgystan having to

surrender any territory for it. Then a

few weeks later, Usuzbekiststan joined

Kystan and Tajjikstan in another

momentous conference where they all

jointly declared that for the first time

since the collapse of the Soviet Union

34 years previously, they had agreed to

fully resolve all of their outstanding

border disputes and fully delineate all

of their shared borders with one

another, dramatically reducing the odds

of further interstate violence taking

place here. While the borders still look

really weird and janky across the

Forgana Valley. And while they've

sparked their fair share of violence and

controversy, they've also been

remarkably more stable than nearly

anybody back in the 1990s ever expected

them to be. Despite these messy borders

they inherited from their Soviet

masters, Central Asia has witnessed

significantly less violence overall than

other postsviet regions like the Cauasus

and Ukraine or post Yugoslav regions

like Bosnia and Kosovo. And for that, I

believe that Central Asia deserves far

more credit than many others have given

them. And I think that the region should

serve as a role model for conflict

resolution in the 21st century for

everyone. Messy, weirdl looking borders

don't have to lead to enormous violence

and attempts to redraw them. And I think

that Central Asia is the biggest proof

for that in the world today. While

Central Asia has remained relatively

stable, other parts of the world haven't

been so fortunate. As I was writing this

video, the US has quietly launched its

largest military operation in the

Western Hemisphere in decades. So far,

they've targeted smuggling routes in the

Caribbean Sea in the Eastern Pacific

Ocean and have launched at least 25

known strikes on boats since early

September that have killed at least 95

people. What's striking is how little

public attention all of this has

received and how differently the stories

being told depending on which outlets

you follow. That's where the danger

lies. When the media filters out certain

stories or frames them through a narrow

political lens, we lose the full

picture. And in global affairs, not

having that context means we

misunderstand what's happening and why

it matters. And that's exactly why I

rely on Ground News, today's sponsor.

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differences are stark. Over 270 sources

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can see every news outlet that reported

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President Trump has framed the ongoing

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as a plot to overthrow him. And just a

few days ago, another US military strike

on a boat accused of drug smuggling in

the Eastern Pacific reportedly killed

another eight more people. While all of

the reporting on this specific story

have acknowledged the eight initial

deaths, left-leaning coverage of it

often frames the military strikes as a

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questioning the operation's overall

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thank you if you sign up. And as always,

thank you so much for watching.