International legal context

Adherence to all treaties

Disarmament Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW)	Not Party
2001 Firearms Protocol	Not Party

International Humanitarian Law Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1949 Geneva Conventions	State Party
Additional Protocol I of 1977	State Party
Additional Protocol II of 1977	State Party

International Criminal Law Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court	Not Party

International Human Rights Treaties

Instrument	Status	Comment
1966 Covenant on Civil and Political Rights	State Party
Optional Protocol to the ICCPR	State Party
1966 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights	State Party
1948 Genocide Convention	State Party
1984 Convention against Torture	State Party
Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)	State Party
Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict	State Party

Membership to International Organisations

Organisation	Status	Comment
United Nations	Member State
International Court of Justice	Did not accept compulsory jurisdiction
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)	Participating State
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)	Member State	Safeguards agreement in place
Collective Security Treaty Organization	Member State
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)	Member State
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)	Member State

Domestic Legal Context

Imports, Exports, and Supplier Base

According to the SIPRI Arms Transfers Database, Kyrgyzstan’s recorded major-arms imports since the early 2000s have come predominantly from Russia, with occasional deliveries from Kazakhstan, Belarus, Türkiye, and another (unidentified) supplier. Early transfers were helicopter-centred and modest: two Mi-17 transport helicopters delivered by Russia in 2003; two further Mi-17s delivered by Kazakhstan in 2004; a single Russian Mi-17 delivered in 2005; and four An-2 light transport aircraft from an unidentified supplier, delivered in 2006.

A second wave of deliveries, concentrated in 2014–19, brought heavier equipment: ten Russian D-30 122mm towed guns, delivered in 2015; 60 Russian BTR-70 armoured personnel carriers, delivered in 2017; two Russian An-26 transport aircraft, delivered in 2017; nine Russian BRDM-2 armoured reconnaissance vehicles, delivered in 2018; four further Russian Mi-17 helicopters, delivered in 2019; and two Russian P-12 air-search radars, delivered in 2019.

Since 2021, deliveries have diversified toward air defence and unmanned systems. Belarus delivered a single S-125T Pechora-2T surface-to-air missile system, in 2023. Türkiye supplied ten armed drones across four separate acquisitions within roughly two years: four Bayraktar TB-2s, delivered in 2022; two Bayraktar Akinci, delivered in 2022; and two each of the Anka-S and Aksungur types, both ordered in 2022 and delivered in 2023. Russia recorded a further Mi-17 delivery in 2023.

SIPRI also records Kyrgyzstan as the supplier in nine transactions, to four recipient States, spanning 1994 to 2025. In 1994–95, shortly after independence, Kyrgyzstan supplied combat helicopters to Sudan (one Mi-24D) and India (fifteen Mi-24P). It supplied MiG-21PFM fighter aircraft to Croatia (four delivered 2003) and India (nineteen delivered 2003), and separately supplied India with SET-65 anti-submarine torpedoes on two occasions: thirty-six delivered in 2007, and a further fourteen, delivered in 2017. Canada is recorded as having received six Mi-8T transport helicopters from Kyrgyzstan, delivered in 2008. Most recently, Sudan is recorded as having received two Il-76M heavy transport aircraft from Kyrgyzstan: one delivered in 2024, and a second delivered in 2025 — a transfer discussed further, under ‘Risk of Diversion and Re-Export’ below.

Kyrgyzstan’s supplier-side record merits further, independently sourced context beyond the bare SIPRI entries. Kyrgyzstan’s reported supply of SET-65 torpedoes to India should be viewed in the context of a longstanding India–Kyrgyzstan defence-industrial relationship centred on the Dastan torpedo plant and Ulan testing facility at Lake Issyk-Kul. India has used the Ulan Torpedo Range since at least 1997 for testing naval and prototype torpedoes, while Dastan has supplied torpedoes to the Indian Navy; Kyrgyz sources also confirm Indian Ministry of Defence contracts with Dastan and Ulan. However, available open sources do not directly establish that the specific SET-65 transfers recorded by SIPRI formed part of this relationship, so this should be treated as contextual rather than confirmed evidence of the transaction’s provenance.

Domestic legislation relevant to the Arms Trade Treaty

National Framework

Kyrgyzstan is not a State Party to the ATT. Its principal framework for controlling international transfers of conventional arms and other controlled products is the Law of the Kyrgyz Republic No. 30 of 23 January 2003 ‘On Export Control’, as amended, including by Law No. 25 of 2023. The Law defines controlled products to include military-purpose products and dual-use products included in the National Control List, together with specified works and services. Following the 2023 amendments, military-purpose products are expressly incorporated into the export-control framework, including through specific definitions and provisions governing their transfer. The Law also defines an end-user certificate, under which the importer undertakes that controlled products will be used only for their declared purposes and, without the consent of the authorized body, will not be re-exported or transferred to third countries.

The Cabinet of Ministers approves the National Control List under Article 6 and establishes the interdepartmental Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation and Export Control under Article 8. The Cabinet also has authority to approve the list of works and services relating to military-purpose products and the list of countries subject to export prohibitions or restrictions. Approval of the National Control List was transferred from parliament to the Cabinet under an earlier amendment. The current list was approved by Resolution No. 63 of 10 February 2023 and has subsequently been updated, most recently by Resolution No. 804 of 26 December 2024. The Commission is governed by Resolution No. 368 of 27 June 2025, which provides for its chairmanship by the First Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, with the Ministry of Defence responsible for military-technical cooperation and the Ministry of Economy and Commerce responsible for export control, serving as deputy chairs. The Commission’s role is principally interdepartmental coordination and procedural decision-making.

Articles 7 and 9 of the Export Control Law establish a catch-all control mechanism in addition to the National Control List. They prohibit transactions where a participant knows that the goods will be used for the development or use of weapons of mass destruction or in preparation for acts of terrorism. This constitutes an additional screening mechanism beyond list-based control, although it is narrower than the ATT’s risk-assessment framework.

Article 10 of the Law requires an end-user certificate and written undertaking for transfers of both dual-use and military-purpose products. The undertaking confirms the declared end use and provides that the products will not be re-exported or transferred to a third country without the consent of the authorized body. Article 15(1) provides a right of appeal against export-control decisions.

The current licensing procedure is established by Cabinet Resolution No. 573 of 13 September 2024,, as amended by Resolution No. 204 of 30 March 2026. Licensing authority is divided between the Ministry of Economy and Commerce for dual-use products and the Ministry of Defence for military-purpose products. The regulations provide for refusal of a licence in circumstances including procedural deficiencies, inconsistency with UN sanctions or Kyrgyzstan’s non-proliferation obligations, conflicts with foreign-policy or national-security interests, and specified risks to international security or regional stability. The regulations also identify circumstances involving terrorism or increased conflict in the destination country. Separate procedures apply to transit, including a specific regime for military-purpose products transiting Kyrgyz territory.

The Law No. 49 of 9 June 1999 ‘On Weapons’, as amended, provides the principal framework for civilian, service and combat weapons. Its international transfer provisions are relevant to the import, export and re-export of weapons and ammunition. These provisions operate alongside the export-control regime established by the 2003 Export Control Law and the National Control List. The Weapons Law also establishes the broader domestic classification and regulatory system for civilian, service and combat weapons; its provisions concerning domestic possession, registration, storage, and use are considered separately in the law-enforcement framework below.

The Law No. 195 of 2013 ‘On the Licensing and Permit System’, as amended, complements these controls by identifying activities requiring licences or permits. These include the production, repair and trade in weapons and ammunition; the development, production and sale of military-purpose products and related services; the import and export of weapons, military equipment and other military-purpose products included on the relevant Cabinet-approved lists; and the import, export, and re-export of goods included in the National Control List. The Law separately requires a permit for the transit of weapons and military equipment through Kyrgyz territory and for the acquisition, storage, transport, and carriage of civilian and service weapons and ammunition.

The Rules on the Circulation of Service and Civilian Weapons and Ammunition, originally approved by Government Resolution No. 721 of 21 November 2001 and subsequently amended, provide detailed procedures governing the circulation of civilian and service weapons and ammunition, including their import and export. Their principal relevance is to international movements, licensing and border controls. Their provisions governing domestic registration, storage, carrying, use, seizure and destruction form part of the domestic weapons-control system applicable to law-enforcement and other authorized users.

Transparency and Reporting

As a State not party to the ATT, Kyrgyzstan does not submit ATT annual reports.

Kyrgyzstan filed nil returns for 1995, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2009, and no submission has been identified for any other year, but its 2004 return disclosed one substantive transfer: the import of two Mi-8MTV-1 helicopters, recorded under UNROCA Category V(a) (attack helicopters), with the United States listed as the exporting State and Kazakhstan as the country of origin. Kyrgyzstan’s ‘remarks field’ records that the transfer was made ‘under grant No. S-KG100-03 M0096 in the framework of the project “Suppression of cross-border smuggling using aircraft”, undertaken under the auspices of the programme “Export control and border security”’ – identifying the transaction as US security assistance. The same 2004 return recorded no exports, no military holdings, and no acquisitions through national production.

Kyrgyzstan’s most recent Programme of Action on Small Arms and Light Weapons (PoA) national report, covering 2024–25 and submitted in 2026, states that it has not adopted a national action plan or national targets under the PoA, with development of such a plan ‘remaining under consideration’. The report records the destruction of 2,500 weapons in each of 2024 and 2025, and the collection of 366 SALW in 2024 and 500 in 2025. By comparison, the earlier national report covering 2016–17 classified its corresponding weapons destruction and collection figures under a 1999 State-secrets resolution; the 2024–25 report therefore provides the more useful recent quantitative evidence.

Key Weaponry in the Armed Forces

Strategic position and defence posture

Kyrgyzstan’s defence posture is primarily oriented towards territorial defence, border security, and the management of regional security threats rather than expeditionary military operations. Janes identifies three principal factors shaping Kyrgyzstan’s threat perception: the potential spillover of Islamist insurgency from Afghanistan; the growing capabilities of the Uzbek armed forces, together with the risk of inter-ethnic violence between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks; and the former border dispute with Tajikistan. 

The Kyrgyz-Tajik border was for decades one of the least-delimited in Central Asia and the site of recurrent violence, including armed clashes in April 2021 and again in September 2022 that prompted the deployment of additional Kyrgyz forces and assets to the border region (discussed in detail below). The two governments announced on 4 December 2024 that they had completed the description of all remaining border sections, and Presidents Japarov and Rahmon signed a border delimitation treaty in Bishkek on 13 March 2025. Demarcation was reported to be underway in 2026, and Janes assessed the border as stable as of April 2026, noting that the longer this stability persists, the more likely the dispute is to decline in prominence within Kyrgyzstan’s threat perception.

Russia maintains the 999th Air Base at Kant, roughly 20km east of Bishkek, opened in 2003 under CSTO auspices as Moscow’s first new overseas air base since the Soviet collapse. Kyrgyzstan agreed in December 2012 to a 15-year lease (with an option for a further five-year extension, taking the arrangement toward 2032), reportedly in exchange for Russia writing off around US$500 million of Kyrgyz debt; Russia is reported to pay in the region of US$4.5 million annually for its consolidated basing arrangements in the country. The United States separately operated the Manas Transit Center (Bishkek’s international airport) in support of coalition operations in Afghanistan from 2002 until its closure in June 2014, after which Russia reinforced its own presence at Kant.

Kyrgyzstan is a unitary presidential republic: the president is directly elected and serves as both head of state and de facto head of the executive, the Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers is a presidential appointee who leads the government, and the unicameral Jogorku Kenesh (Supreme Council) combines 54 party-list and 36 first-past-the-post seats. President Japarov, who came to power amid the unrest following the disputed October 2020 parliamentary election, led an April 2021 constitutional referendum that significantly expanded presidential power at the legislature’s expense; he signed the resulting Constitution the same year and called at the time for military reform oriented toward mountain-warfare-capable special units and the creation of ‘people’s guards’ for mobilization readiness in border areas.

The Ministry of Defence, abolished in 2014 in favour of a State Defence Committee, was re-established under President Japarov in 2021. The next presidential election is scheduled for 24 January 2027. According to Janes, no indicators suggest the military is likely to threaten or coerce the civilian-led government in the short to medium term; the armed forces continue to operate in a subordinate role and do not play a direct part in political decision-making.

Institutional integrity within the security sector is a concern shaping the environment in which defence and export-control decisions are made. Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index ranked Kyrgyzstan 142^nd of 182 countries. On 10 February 2026, President Japarov dismissed Colonel General Kamchybek Tashiev as head of the State Committee for National Security (GKNB) and as deputy prime minister; on 16 March 2026 the State Tax Service publicly alleged a scheme to siphon proceeds from the state-owned Kyrgyzneftegaz oil and gas company, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal investigation the same day – Tashiev’s brother, former MP Shairbek Tashiev, was subsequently detained, and a nephew separately questioned, in the widening investigation. These events are independently corroborated by contemporaneous reporting.

Also per Janes, no large-scale terrorist attack had been publicly attributed to a domestic militant cell in Kyrgyzstan as of April 2026; the GKNB detained 33 members of Hizb-ut-Tahrir between December 2024 and September 2025; and, as of April 2026, Kyrgyzstan’s list of banned extremist and terrorist organizations included 20 groups, among them Hizb-ut-Tahrir, al-Qaeda, the Turkistan Islamic Party, Islamic State, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; the Taliban were removed from the list in September 2024, consistent with independent reporting.

President Japarov has placed sustained emphasis on strengthening the Armed Forces’ capabilities. Tashiev, before his dismissal, stated that KGS93 billion was spent on Kyrgyzstan’s defence capabilities in 2022 and the first half of 2023 alone. SIPRI’s Military Expenditure Database records a substantial increase in Kyrgyzstan’s military expenditure in recent years. SIPRI series puts military expenditure at approximately US$396 million in 2022, rising to about US$512 million in 2023 and US$511 million in 2024. Military expenditure represented approximately 3.2% of GDP in 2023 and 2.9% in 2024. Janes nonetheless assesses that the Armed Forces’’ effectiveness remains constrained by inadequate funding, underdeveloped command structures, and insufficient air capabilities, leaving Kyrgyzstan reliant on Russian assistance for territorial defence.

Kyrgyz land forces and aviation capabilities remain dependent on Russia for spare parts and military hardware. Janes reports that the land forces’ capacity to conduct basic operational tasks is likely to improve over the medium term as Kyrgyzstan receives infantry fighting vehicles, reconnaissance vehicles, and helicopters under a reported US$1.1 billion Russian military package. The Kyrgyz Air Force, by contrast, does not possess combat capabilities, and Janes assesses that Russia is unlikely to address this shortfall by transferring sensitive capability; instead, Moscow maintains leverage in the bilateral relationship by deploying its own aircraft to Kyrgyz airbases at Kant, allowing it to project force and retain operational influence without transferring combat-air capability itself.

Kyrgyzstan’s capacity to sustain rising nominal defence spending is shaped by a lower-middle-income economy that the World Bank describes as having stabilized politically since 2021 and which reached double-digit growth by 2025, though that growth remains heavily dependent on gold mining and remittances – China alone accounted for 23.9% of FDI inflows – rather than on productivity gains or private-sector diversification, and youth unemployment rose in 2025 even as headline unemployment stayed low. Internal political uncertainty continues to limit the translation of rising defence expenditure into capability, adding uncertainty to Kyrgyzstan’s future defence budgets.

The wider security environment includes significant exposure to transnational organized crime. GI-TOC’s Global Organized Crime Index 2025 gives Kyrgyzstan a criminality score of 5.25 of 10 (85th of 193 countries) against a resilience score of just 3.79 (141st of 193). This indicates State capacity to counter organized crime is substantially weaker than the scale of the criminal markets operating in the country. GI-TOC scores arms trafficking specifically at 3.50 of 10 and State-embedded criminal actors at 8.50 of 10, and separately identifies Kyrgyzstan as playing a critical role in the heroin trade along the northern route between Afghanistan and Russia, with State-embedded actors, mafia-style groups, and transnational networks named as the dominant participants. GI-TOC’s 2025 country narrative also flags ‘emerging concerns about Kyrgyzstan’s potential role in facilitating sanctions evasion, particularly in relation to the re-export of dual-use goods’.

Composition of the Armed Forces      

Army

The Kyrgyzstan Army is the principal land component of the Armed Forces of the Kyrgyz Republic and operates under the Ministry of Defence. The President of the Kyrgyz Republic is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The Army operates a mixed personnel system combining compulsory military service with contract service.

The Army is organized around motor-rifle and mountain formations, supported by artillery, armoured, reconnaissance, engineering, and air-defence units. The force structure includes the 8th Guards Motor Rifle Division and regional formations and commands oriented towards the country’s principal security areas. The Ministry of Defence’s force structure also includes dedicated air-defence forces, although the Army itself operates organic ground-based air-defence systems.

Air Force

The Kyrgyzstan Air and Air Defence Force is a small component of the Kyrgyz Armed Forces, responsible primarily for air support to ground forces and air defence. It inherited Soviet-era aircraft and infrastructure but has limited independent combat-air capability. Its fixed-wing fleet is limited, with modernization focusing principally on ground-based air defence and, more recently, unmanned systems.

Kyrgyzstan participates in the Joint Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Air Defence System and remains reliant on Russian support for wider air-security requirements. Russia maintains a military air presence at Kant Air Base, including a squadron of Su-25SM close-air-support aircraft, two Mi-8MTV helicopters, and two An-26 tactical aircraft, supported by Orlan-10 and Forpost UAVs. These Russian-operated assets are separate from the Kyrgyzstan Air and Air Defence Force inventory and are therefore not included in the equipment holdings below.

Air-defence systems

Kyrgyzstan’s recent air-defence modernisation has focused on Russian-supplied systems. The current Janes inventory records four S-300PS surface-to-air missile systems and two Tor-M2KM short-range air-defence systems. It also records two P-18-2 early-warning radars.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

Janes narrative reports that, at the end of 2021, Kyrgyzstan purchased Turkish UAVs Bayraktar Akindzhi combat drones. These drones were included in the Kalkan – 2022 military exercise. In January 2023, it was also reported that Kyrgyzstan had purchased Anka UAVs from Turkey. None of these, however, appears in Janes inventory list.

Recent and current operations

Peacekeeping, CSTO and CIS frameworks

Kyrgyzstan was a founding signatory of the Collective Security Treaty, signed in Tashkent on 15 May 1992 and in force from 20 April 1994, and has been a member of its successor organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), since the treaty was upgraded to a full international organization at a Moscow summit on 14 May 2002 (CSTO Charter signed 7 October 2002). The CSTO remains Kyrgyzstan’s principal framework for collective-security and military cooperation with Russia and its other members – Armenia (which suspended its participation in 2024), Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan – including joint exercises and the roughly 18,000-strong Collective Rapid Reaction Force. Kyrgyzstan held the CSTO’s rotating chairmanship in 2025, taking it over from Kazakhstan on 1 January 2025 and handing it to Russia at year’s end.

Kyrgyzstan’s most substantial operational contribution to the CSTO to date came in January 2022, when it joined Russia, Belarus, Armenia and Tajikistan in the CSTO’s collective peacekeeping deployment to Kazakhstan following the mass unrest that began on 2 January. Kyrgyzstan’s parliament approved the deployment on 7 January 2022, following the government’s decision to contribute a contingent to the CSTO mission. The contingent was drawn from the Scorpion special-purpose unit of the Kyrgyz Armed Forces and comprised approximately 150 personnel and 19 items of military equipment. The Kyrgyz contingent was deployed to Almaty, where its principal task was to protect strategic infrastructure rather than participate directly in the operations against protesters.

On 13 January, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Defence reported that its personnel remained on duty guarding Almaty Thermal Power Plant No. 2 (TPP-2/TES-2). The contingent returned to Kyrgyzstan on 14 January, arriving at its permanent base in Tokmok. The deployment formed part of a wider CSTO peacekeeping force comprising contingents from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The CSTO subsequently began withdrawing its forces on 13 January, and the organization announced that the withdrawal of all contingents had been completed by 19 January 2022. 

Kyrgyzstan is also a member of the CIS and participates in CIS military-security mechanisms, including the CIS Joint (Integrated) Air Defence System coordinating Kyrgyz and Russian air defence since the 1990s.

The 2021–22 Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border conflicts

A long-running, largely undelimited border dispute with Tajikistan escalated into open inter-State fighting on two occasions. First came clashes beginning on 28–29 April 2021, triggered by a dispute over the Golovnoy/Kök-Tash water-distribution facility, in which Kyrgyz authorities reported 36 Kyrgyz citizens killed (including a five-year-old boy) and 183 injured, while roughly 50,000 people fled the area. Later, a sharper escalation occurred from 14 to 16 September 2022, in which Kyrgyz authorities reported 59 of their citizens killed and Tajik forces were said to have used tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and mortars inside Kyrgyz territory, including shelling of the town of Batken and its airport, with roughly 136,000 people evacuated from the affected area. Casualty figures and attributed violations for both episodes are addressed under the section below, ‘Compliance with IHL and Human Rights by the Armed Forces’.

At the time of the April 2021 clash, delimitation of the roughly 1,000km-long Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border remained incomplete. Negotiations stalled in 2011 after the two sides agreed only around 520km, leaving just under half the border undefined, and little further progress was made until after the 2021–22 clashes forced the issue. The April 2021 fighting was initially halted by a ceasefire the two countries’ foreign ministries agreed effective on 29 April, though it was violated at least twice, including that same night. A further ceasefire followed on 1 May, troop withdrawal was completed by 3 May, and the two sides announced agreement on joint security controls along the disputed border on 18 May 2021. Defence of the contested Golovnoy/Kök-Tash facility initially fell to the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Internal Troops rather than regular Ground Forces: contemporaneous Kyrgyz press reporting identified the forces guarding the facility as the ‘Sher’ special-purpose detachment, which held the position, initially unarmed, once Tajik forces opened fire on 29 April, before a State Border Guard Service column reinforced them.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan signed a protocol on 19 September 2022 reiterating their commitment to resolving the border-demarcation process peacefully. On 4 December 2024, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan announced completion of the delimitation of all remaining border sections, and the two presidents signed a final agreement on the border in Bishkek on 13 March 2025. Subsequent demarcation work began, with installation of border markers underway in 2026. Independent assessment continues to describe border tensions as capable of flaring into violent clashes despite the improved trajectory.

The 2010 Osh violence

The June 2010 Osh and Jalal-Abad violence was the most significant episode of internal armed violence in Kyrgyzstan’s recent history. Between 10 and 14 June 2010, inter-communal violence, principally between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities, killed at least several hundred people, displaced hundreds of thousands, and prompted approximately 100,000 people to flee to Uzbekistan.

The Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission subsequently found that some of the violence in Osh amounted to crimes against humanity. Allegations concerning the involvement and conduct of Kyrgyz security forces, including the Armed Forces, Internal Troops, and police, were subsequently documented by international investigations and human-rights organizations. The respective roles of these forces and the allegations of unlawful conduct are examined separately below under Armed Forces compliance and Law-enforcement/police compliance.

Compliance with IHL and Human Rights by the Armed Forces

The Kyrgyzstan–Tajikistan border conflicts

The principal and best-documented allegations concerning the conduct of the Kyrgyz Armed Forces relate to the April 2021 and September 2022 armed clashes with Tajikistan. Human Rights Watch’s May 2023 investigation, ‘When We Moved, They Shot’, indicated that both Kyrgyz and Tajik forces committed violations of international humanitarian law during the September 2022 fighting, several of which it assessed as likely amounting to war crimes.

On the Kyrgyz side, Human Rights Watch documented three specific attacks on 16 September 2022. Kyrgyz forces used a drone-delivered laser-guided bomb against a crowded town square in Ovchi Kal’acha, Tajikistan, killing ten civilian men and injuring around a dozen others; satellite imagery indicated the munition (typically carried by a Bayraktar TB-2) was launched from a Kyrgyz airbase. Kyrgyz forces separately fired on two clearly marked Tajik ambulances and a civilian car near the Tajik village of Chorbog, killing ten civilians and injuring six, and killed two health workers in a further, separate attack on a marked Tajik ambulance in Ovchi Kal’acha. Human Rights Watch assessed all three attacks as apparent war crimes, given the vehicles’ clear medical markings and the square’s visibly civilian character at the time of the strike.

The conduct of the Tajik Armed Forces is addressed in full in the parallel Tajikistan profile; for context, Human Rights Watch found that Tajik forces killed two civilians and injured at least four others in ambushes on vehicles fleeing Kyrgyz villages near Maksat, Jashtyk, Arka and Margun on 16 September, and documented a further six killings of Kyrgyz civilians during the brief Tajik occupation of Kyrgyz border villages on 16–17 September – three men shot while fleeing on foot; two older men killed in their homes in circumstances suggesting they were killed at close range while defenceless; and one further man shot in a group of civilians – alongside large-scale looting and the deliberate burning of homes, a school, a kindergarten, and a medical facility in villages including Ak-Sai, Kapchygai, Dostuk, Arka and Bakai. Human Rights Watch assessed several of these acts as likely amounting to war crimes.

Casualty figures for the two clashes vary by source and have not been fully reconciled. During the April 2021 fighting, Kyrgyz authorities reported 36 people killed and 183 injured, with roughly 50,000 people evacuated from the affected area; Tajikistan’s Sughd provincial administration confirmed 19 Tajik deaths by 6 May 2021, while RFE/RL’s Tajik Service had reported at least 16 Tajik deaths and around 90 injured a few days earlier. For the September 2022 fighting, Kyrgyzstan’s Health Ministry put the confirmed toll at 59 killed and 144 injured. Tajikistan reported at least 35 deaths on its own side, while unnamed Tajik officials separately told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service that at least 39 Tajik citizens had died. Human Rights Watch’s own investigation documented at least 37 civilian deaths (including 5 children) and 36 further civilian injuries.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly called on both governments to conduct prompt, impartial investigations and prosecute those responsible; before publishing its report, it put a series of questions to both governments in December 2022 and March 2023. Kyrgyzstan’s government replied with information about attacks against its own citizens but gave no information on attacks involving its own forces; Tajikistan’s government did not respond at all. This is the closest documented indication of how Kyrgyzstan’s own authorities have engaged with the allegations. Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2026 Kyrgyzstan chapter states plainly that ‘neither side has publicized information indicating that perpetrators from their own forces were held to account for violations they committed during the conflict’. No publicly documented prosecution, court-martial, or other judicial process concerning members of either country’s armed forces for conduct during the April 2021 or September 2022 clashes was identified in the sources reviewed for this draft.

Separately, Kyrgyzstan’s criminal-justice response to the April 2021 border fighting was principally framed around establishing Tajik responsibility. On 3 May 2021, the Prosecutor General’s Office opened pre-trial proceedings under Article 380 of the Criminal Code, concerning a ‘crime against peace’, and characterized the fighting as a planned armed aggression by Tajikistan. The investigation was assigned to an interdepartmental group comprising personnel from the GKNB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Military Prosecutor’s Office. 

Tajikistan adopted a mirror position: its Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal case concerning Kyrgyz servicemen and citizens for allegedly unleashing an aggressive war. The Kyrgyz Ministry of Internal Affairs also reported opening 11 criminal cases concerning the border events, covering offences including murder, riots, crimes against peace, hooliganism, and illegal border crossing. 

The June 2010 Osh violence

The great majority of those killed in the June 2010 violence were ethnic Uzbeks – about 74% of the roughly 470 dead the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission (KIC) identified, against about 25% ethnic Kyrgyz and 1% of other nationalities. The violence involved widespread, in places systematic, attacks on predominantly Uzbek neighbourhoods (mahallas), including killings, destruction of property, and sexual violence. The KIC’s count put internal displacement at around 300,000 people, with a further roughly 111,000 fleeing to Uzbekistan, broadly consistent with the contemporaneous UNHCR figures cited above. While the violence was still underway, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights publicly warned that ‘indiscriminate killings, including of children, and rapes have been taking place on the basis of ethnicity’, and specifically cautioned security forces against a reported ‘shoot-to-kill policy’, reiterating that the right to life and the prohibition on torture could not be set aside even under a declared state of emergency.

The KIC found the role of the security forces significant. Around 2,000 military personnel were under the command of the Provisional Government at the time; the Commission concluded that, properly instructed and deployed, they could have prevented or stopped the violence and blocked attackers moving into Osh from surrounding rural areas. It found that the security forces’ failure to protect their equipment from seizure raised questions of direct or indirect complicity, and that some military personnel were involved in some of the attacks on Uzbek mahallas – a finding of military involvement. In June 2010, an initial Human Rights Watch dispatch said it could not yet establish whether Kyrgyz security forces had directly participated in the attacks. Human Rights Watch’s fuller investigation, published two months later, documented dozens of independent witness accounts of men in military-style camouflage using APCs, and, in some locations, tanks, to breach barricades protecting Uzbek neighbourhoods. Officials gave the organization differing and largely unverified explanations for the vehicles’ presence, variously denying any use of military vehicles or claiming crowds had stolen them.

The KIC concluded that the violence as a whole did not qualify as either war crimes or genocide, but that certain attacks against ethnic Uzbeks in Osh on 11–13 June 2010 could constitute crimes against humanity: murder, rape and other sexual violence, physical violence amounting to other inhumane acts, and persecution against an identifiable group on ethnic grounds. Operational command of the roughly 2,000 troops in Osh city and province rested with General Ismail Isakov – simultaneously Minister of Defence and the Provisional Government’s Special Representative for southern Kyrgyzstan – who took command of the joint operational headquarters from 11 June. No disciplinary or criminal investigation into the authorities’ handling of the events was identified.

Key Weaponry in Law Enforcement Agencies

Legal Framework

Law enforcement in Kyrgyzstan is principally exercised by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA/MVD) and its internal affairs bodies, whose principal civilian law-enforcement service is the police (militsiya). The Law “On Internal Affairs Bodies of the Kyrgyz Republic” No. 1360-XII of 11 January 1994, as amended, defines the internal affairs bodies as a State armed law-enforcement system responsible for ensuring public order, the security of individuals and society, and combating crime. The system includes the Ministry and its territorial, transport, city and district units, as well as special and secure facilities, educational institutions and the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The principal statutory framework governing service in the law-enforcement bodies and the use of coercive powers is the Law “On Service in Law Enforcement Bodies of the Kyrgyz Republic” No. 102 of 25 July 2019, as amended. Article 1 defines the law enforcement bodies covered by the Law. Certain use-of-force provisions apply to personnel of the national-security body when exercising law-enforcement functions and to relevant military personnel.

Articles 37–39 establish the purposes and general conditions for the use of force and weapons. These include preventing or suppressing socially dangerous acts and offences, apprehending and delivering persons who have committed offences, preventing escapes, responding to hostage-taking, mass disturbances and group disobedience, enforcing lawful demands, and protecting life, health, rights and freedoms. Article 38 requires non-forceful methods to be used unless inadequate in the circumstances. Article 39 establishes safeguards including a general requirement for prior warning, subject to specified exceptions where delay would endanger life or cause other serious consequences, together with requirements to minimize harm, provide medical assistance, and report the use of force.

The provisions governing special means and weapons establish restrictions concerning their use against visibly pregnant women, persons with visibly apparent disabilities and minors, subject to specified exceptions where such persons offer armed resistance or participate in an attack endangering life or health. They also restrict the use of special means against peaceful, non-violent assemblies and establish safeguards concerning firearms where other persons could be endangered.

The Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs constitute a militarized component of the MIA and are separately governed by the Law ‘On the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic’ No. 70 of 3 June 2019, as amended. Their statutory tasks include joint public-order patrols with the police, protection of strategic sites and special cargo, enforcement of states of emergency and martial law, suppression of illegal armed formations and terrorist groups, response to mass disturbances, and rescue and evacuation operations. Internal Troops are required to give a prior warning before using force (except where delay would endanger life or cause other serious consequences), and to minimize harm and provide medical assistance. They must report the use of force to their commander within 24 hours.

The GKNB is institutionally separate from the MIA and performs national-security and intelligence functions, including counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and border protection. It also conducts operational-search and investigative activities and maintains its own pre-trial detention facilities. Article 36(3) expressly brings GKNB officers within the use of force provisions in the Law when they exercise law-enforcement functions. The GKNB’s institutional framework and its specific powers are otherwise governed by separate legislation. Its Anti-Terrorism Centre also coordinates counterterrorism and counterextremism activities involving other State bodies; its coordination powers were expanded by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 434 of June 2026.

The Law ‘On Weapons’ No. 49 of 9 June 1999, as amended, provides the broader domestic framework for the classification and circulation of weapons. The domestic provisions governing registration, storage, carrying, transport and use of weapons operate alongside the 2019 Law governing the operational use of weapons by law-enforcement personnel.

The constitutional framework provides additional safeguards relevant to the use of weapons and coercive measures. The 2010 Constitution protects the right to life, prohibits torture and inhuman or degrading treatment, and guarantees the right to peaceful assembly. The Law ‘On Peaceful Assemblies’ No. 64 of 23 May 2012 considers use of force to terminate an assembly an extreme measure and restricts the use of physical force, special means, and firearms against an assembly that does not itself resort to violence or firearms. The Criminal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure, both substantially revised in 2019, provide additional safeguards relevant to detention, investigation and treatment of persons in custody.

Oversight

The Law ‘On Service in Law Enforcement Bodies of the Kyrgyz Republic’ No. 102 of 25 July 2019 establishes internal and external mechanisms for oversight of the use of force. Articles 55–58 require reporting on the use of force, provide for internal investigations in specified circumstances, establish prosecutorial oversight and provide for disciplinary, administrative or criminal liability for unlawful use. Every use of force is subject to reporting requirements, and where the use results in death the territorial prosecutor’s office must be notified. Cases involving injury, death, material harm or a citizen’s complaint are subject to an internal disciplinary investigation. Where an investigation identifies a violation, its findings are referred to the prosecutor. The legislation therefore combines immediate reporting, internal review and external prosecutorial supervision.

Under Article 26 of the Law ‘On Internal Affairs Bodies of the Kyrgyz Republic’ No. 1360-XII of 11 January 1994, the Prosecutor General and subordinate prosecutors supervise the legality of the activities of the internal affairs bodies. Individuals who consider that an internal-affairs officer has infringed their rights, freedoms, or lawful interests may challenge the officer’s actions before a superior internal-affairs official, the prosecutor or a court.

The Internal Troops are subject to a separate prosecutorial oversight arrangement Law ‘On the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic’ No. 70 of 3 June 2019. Article 24 provides for supervision by the Military Prosecutor’s Office, reflecting the military character of the force, rather than the ordinary prosecutorial structure applicable to the internal-affairs bodies.

The Akyikatchy (Ombudsman) provides an additional external human-rights monitoring and complaints mechanism. Its statutory framework was substantially changed in 2025 by Constitutional Law No. 203 of 22 September 2025, which replaced the previous Ombudsman Law and incorporated the functions previously exercised by the National Centre for the Prevention of Torture (NCPT). The Akyikatchy has powers to monitor compliance with human rights by State bodies, including bodies conducting operational-search activities, to visit detention facilities, interview detainees privately, and examine complaints.

The transfer of the NCPT’s preventive mandate to the Ombudsman institution has nevertheless raised concerns about the independence and institutional capacity of torture-prevention oversight. Human Rights Watch criticized the 2025 reform as weakening the previous preventive mechanism, while the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern that abolishing the NCPT and transferring its mandate to an institution that was not yet fully independent could undermine Kyrgyzstan’s torture-prevention obligations. The Akyikatchy’s broader role in monitoring law-enforcement bodies should therefore be distinguished from the question of whether independent preventive oversight is sufficiently protected in practice.

The oversight framework provides several avenues for accountability for unlawful weapons use (through internal disciplinary procedures, prosecutors, courts and the Ombudsman) but the effectiveness of these mechanisms must be assessed separately from their formal legal powers. Documented cases of excessive force, torture, or ill-treatment are considered under the Compliance section below.

Police Compliance with the Law of Law Enforcement and Human Rights

Custodial torture and ill-treatment

In its 2021 Concluding Observations, the UN Committee against Torture remained ‘deeply concerned’ at reports of numerous cases of torture and ill-treatment of persons in police custody, and at the ‘very low proportion of criminal investigations opened into such allegations compared with the number of complaints received, and the very low number of cases where State officials have been prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment’. This built on similar findings by the Human Rights Committee in its 2014 Concluding Observations, which had raised concern about the ‘ongoing and widespread practice of torture and ill-treatment of persons deprived of their liberty for the purpose of extracting confessions, particularly in police custody’, the number of deaths in custody, and the fact that none of the cases reported to the Committee had led to any conviction.

The case of Azimjan Askarov, a human-rights defender and journalist who documented police abuse and prison conditions, is emblematic. Arrested in June 2010 in connection with the Osh violence, Askarov was reportedly tortured in pre-trial detention and sentenced to life imprisonment following a trial the Committee to Protect Journalists and others characterized as marred by irregularities; his sentence was upheld on appeal in November 2010 and again by the Chuy Regional Court in July 2019. Following a complaint filed in 2012 by Askarov’s lawyer and the Open Society Justice Initiative, the UN Human Rights Committee, in Views adopted on 31 March 2016, found violations of the ICCPR’s prohibition on torture, the duty to investigate torture allegations, the prohibition on arbitrary detention, the right to humane conditions of detention, and fair-trial and defence-preparation rights. The Committee called on Kyrgyzstan to release Askarov immediately, quash his conviction, and provide compensation. Askarov died in prison in July 2020 without having received timely medical care or consistent access to his family as his health deteriorated – a death the UN Special Rapporteur and Freedom House both described as marking a significant failure by Kyrgyzstan to meet its human-rights commitments. No accountability for his torture or unfair trial was identified in this draft.

Ethnic bias in the 2010 Osh prosecutions

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, in its 2018 Concluding Observations, found that investigations into the human-rights violations occurring during and after the June 2010 ethnic violence ‘were not effective, and were marred by ethnic bias and lack of respect for fair trial and due process guarantees’, noting that although most victims were of Uzbek origin, most of those criminally prosecuted were also Uzbek. The Committee reiterated concern about the reported use of torture and reliance on forced confessions in these prosecutions, combined with the State’s failure to bring alleged perpetrators of the underlying violence to justice or to compensate victims.

A decade on, Human Rights Watch found the picture essentially unchanged. Citing Kyrgyz government data published in 2017, it reported that courts had by then considered only 286 cases involving 488 people arising from the June events, while nearly 4,000 of the more than 5,000 criminal investigations opened had been suspended because no suspect could be identified or located. A submission to CERD by the domestic NGO Bir Duino found that more than 70% of those criminally prosecuted over the violence were ethnic Uzbek, and that 97 of 105 people prosecuted specifically for killings were Uzbek against 7 Kyrgyz.

The Kyrgyz government has never accepted the KIC’s finding that Uzbeks disproportionately suffered attacks, loss of life and injury, and Kyrgyzstan’s parliament declared the KIC’s chair, Kimmo Kiljunen, persona non grata after the report’s publication. The government reported opening five criminal investigations into custodial-torture allegations connected to the events, but Human Rights Watch was unable to confirm that any officer was ever formally charged or prosecuted as a result.

Use of force in political unrest and public assemblies

Kyrgyzstan’s legal framework formally recognizes the right to peaceful assembly and places limits on the use of force to terminate assemblies, but the record of compliance in practice has been decidedly mixed.

During the June 2010 violence itself, Human Rights Watch documented a joint police-military search operation in the Uzbek-majority village of Nariman, on the outskirts of Osh, on 21 June 2010: security forces went house to house demanding papers, then beat residents with rifle butts and kicked them, wounding at least twenty people, two of whom died, including a 58-year-old man beaten in front of his wife. The forces also looted property and burned identity documents, and detained at least 11 men whose whereabouts were not disclosed to their families. Kyrgyzstan’s chief military prosecutor subsequently told Human Rights Watch that no criminal investigation would be opened, having found the security forces’ conduct – including the beatings that caused two deaths – ‘lawful and adequate’.

The disputed 4 October 2020 parliamentary elections produced the clearest recent example of contested police use of force during political unrest. On 5 October, police attempted to disperse demonstrators in central Bishkek using water cannon, rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades; clashes followed, one protester died (the precise cause disputed), and the Health Ministry reported 686 people treated for injuries. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch both called for an investigation into whether the force used was necessary and proportionate, and whether it contributed to the protester’s death.

President Sooronbay Jeenbekov subsequently declared a state of emergency in Bishkek from the evening of 9 October to 21 October 2020, imposing a curfew and movement restrictions and appointing Deputy Interior Minister as city commandant; the order drew on military as well as police personnel to help maintain public order. As with the June 2010 violence discussed above, the documented allegations of excessive force in this episode are attributed in the reporting reviewed to police and other law-enforcement personnel specifically, not to the Armed Forces as an institution; this section should be read together with, but kept analytically distinct from, the Armed Forces’ compliance record addressed above.

Accountability and oversight

Kyrgyzstan has no independent civilian body empowered to investigate police misconduct generally; the Akyikatchy (Ombudsman)’s recently expanded mandate, noted above, is the principal formal avenue, alongside ordinary criminal prosecution. In the Askarov case, a UN Human Rights Committee finding of arbitrary detention, torture and denial of a fair trial did not translate into a domestic remedy during his lifetime; and the Nariman operation was found ‘lawful and adequate’ by the chief military prosecutor without any investigation being opened at all. Kyrgyzstan’s acceptance of the Human Rights Committee’s individual-complaints procedure under the Optional Protocol to the ICCPR does, however, give individuals a route to an international finding even where domestic courts do not provide one, though, as seen, such a finding does not guarantee domestic implementation.

Risk of Diversion and Re-Export of Imported Weapons

Diversion and stockpile security

No recent publicly documented case was identified of military equipment imported by the Kyrgyz State being diverted from government custody to a foreign State or a non-State armed group. The available evidence points to a historical documented risk of diversion from official custody during the post-Soviet period. The Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining’s Ammunition Management Activity Platform (A-MAP) records three categories of diversion incidents since 2000: seven registered incidents of large-scale firearms theft by military personnel in 2000–02; the 2003 theft, by ten intruders, of around 20 Kalashnikov rifles, more than ten Makarov and Stechkin pistols, a Dragunov sniper rifle and a machine gun from the Jalal-Abad OVD (police department) premises; and the theft of at least 1,200 weapons and ammunition from an undisclosed location in 2010. These incidents are not recent and do not establish a continuing pattern of diversion of imported military equipment, but they demonstrate that weapons have historically been diverted from Kyrgyz State custody.

Kyrgyzstan has subsequently undertaken sustained efforts to strengthen physical security and stockpile management, particularly for military ammunition. Since 2016, the authorities, with support from the OSCE, the GICHD, and ITF Enhancing Human Security, have disposed of expired ammunition, assessed storage facilities and worked on ammunition-management and physical-security practices.

International assistance has continued in more recent years, including through OSCE projects supporting the Ministry of Defence’s life-cycle management of SALW and conventional ammunition, as well as border-trafficking prevention. Training and technical assistance have included ammunition storage, surveillance and transport, physical-security practices, and explosive-ordnance management. The continuation of such programmes indicates that stockpile security remains an area requiring institutional and technical strengthening, although available evidence does not establish a recent diversion of imported State-held weapons.

Illicit arms trafficking

Kyrgyzstan’s illicit arms market presents an ongoing and more persistent concern. GI-TOC’s 2025 Organized Crime Index describes Kyrgyzstan as both a transit and source location for illicit arms, particularly small arms and ammunition, and reports that criminal networks, foreign actors and corrupt officials facilitate the trade. It also notes informal sales of firearms, including Kalashnikov-type rifles, discoveries of caches in rural areas, and increased trafficking risks following the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan.

A concrete recent case demonstrates that Kyrgyzstan has been used as a transit point in an international firearms-trafficking network. In January 2025, the GKNB announced it had dismantled a transnational group involving Kyrgyz, Russian and US nationals that had operated since April 2022 a channel for the illicit movement of firearms and ammunition from the United States through Kyrgyzstan to Russia. According to the GKNB, the group acquired firearms in the United States, sent them to Kyrgyzstan concealed in shipments described as video equipment, assembled complete firearms from their component parts in Kyrgyzstan, and subsequently transferred them to Russia for illegal sale. The weapons reportedly included Glock, CZ and SIG Sauer pistols, AR-15-pattern rifles and shotguns. The authorities stated that more than 300 firearms had passed through the network.

This was a case of privately sourced firearms trafficking through Kyrgyzstan, rather than diversion of Kyrgyz State-held military equipment. It nevertheless demonstrates that Kyrgyzstan can function as a transit jurisdiction for illicit firearms movements involving international criminal networks. The available evidence also shows active intervention by the GKNB against such networks. It therefore provides evidence of an ongoing illicit-trafficking exposure.

The wider organized-crime environment creates an additional, although less directly evidenced, vulnerability. GI-TOC has documented the presence of transnational criminal networks and illicit markets in Kyrgyzstan, including networks associated with the thieves-in-law criminal subculture and links to neighbouring States. These findings do not establish the diversion of State-held weapons and should not be presented as such. They nevertheless provide contextual evidence of an organized-crime environment capable of facilitating smuggling and other illicit cross-border movements.

Re-export and commercial arms-logistics exposure

Kyrgyzstan’s commercial aviation sector presents a separate potential re-export and arms-logistics exposure, but available evidence does not establish that Kyrgyz State authorities or Kyrgyz-registered carriers have facilitated illicit arms transfers. The most significant case concerns the Kyrgyzstan-registered Il-76 EX-76011, formerly operated by New Way Cargo and managed by UAE-based Astraway FZC. The aircraft had previously been associated with flights to Amdjarass, Chad, in the context of UAE-linked logistics connected to the conflict in Sudan. By late 2023, flight-tracking information indicated that it was operating to Port Sudan, the principal base of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Kyrgyz authorities subsequently stated that the aircraft was removed from the Kyrgyz register on 12 January 2024 and transferred to Sudan.

On 21 October 2024, the aircraft was shot down near El-Fasher while reportedly supplying SAF forces. Reuters reported that the aircraft had shifted from earlier operations associated with the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) to supplying the Sudanese army. Reuters also reported information concerning members of the aircraft’s Russian crew and their historical links to individuals and airlines associated with previous arms-trafficking allegations. The precise nature of the aircraft’s earlier role in the Sudan conflict should, however, be treated cautiously: reporting that the aircraft was still supplying the RSF at the time it was shot down was subsequently retracted, although its earlier association with RSF-related operations was maintained.

More broadly, Reuters identified New Way Cargo, FlySky Kyrgyz and Sapsan Airlines among carriers based in Kyrgyzstan that had participated in the UAE-linked airlift to Amdjarass. Reuters could not establish what the aircraft operated by FlySky and Sapsan were carrying, and their involvement should therefore not be characterized as evidence of arms transfers. The evidence instead demonstrates the potential involvement of Kyrgyz-registered or Kyrgyz-based commercial aviation in logistics networks connected to an armed conflict, without establishing the nature of all cargo transported.

The Kyrgyz civil-aviation sector subsequently underwent substantial regulatory reassessment. Following exchanges with the Kyrgyz State Civil Aviation Agency and information submitted in February 2026, the European Commission reported that all Kyrgyz-certified air carriers had been reassessed and that the number of active Air Operator Certificates had fallen from 21 to eight. In June 2026, the European Commission removed all Kyrgyz-certified air carriers from the EU Air Safety List, citing progress in Kyrgyzstan’s aviation-safety oversight, although it noted that certain areas still required consolidation and monitoring.