evidence: Fighting erupted on April 28 after a scuffle between Kyrgyz and Tajik civilians over a Tajik attempt to install a surveillance camera at the Isfara River’s Golovnoy pumping station following a Kyrgyz repair. Both countries claim ownership of the station and a reservoir, which provide water for tens of thousands of hectares of land. [...] In this heavily populated area of Central Asia, ethnic Kyrgyz and Tajiks have skirmished for decades over water and territory in the Isfara Valley, but without massive losses of life and property. Villagers interviewed in the two countries’ border regions of Batken (Kyrgyzstan) and Sughd (Tajikistan) said that they had expected this time to be no different. [...] Local officials also do not "enjoy the full measure of power that the central authorities [in Bishkek and Dushanbe] can give them," objected Temur Umarov of the Carnegie Moscow Center.