The heaviest clashes in decades broke out between the Central Asian nations of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on Thursday, with more than 30 dead and scores injured.

A ceasefire has been signed and the leaderships of both countries say they are committed to a peaceful solution to issues at their contested border.

But the clashes underscored the highly volatile situation along the frontier -- one that could easily escalate again.

Here are five things to know about the violence:

- Much in common -

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan both gained independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

They are both home to mainly Muslim populations, daunting mountain ranges, and a deep-seated poverty that sends hundreds of thousands of citizens abroad in search of work.

The neighbours also host Russian military bases and are members of regional security alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which includes China and Russia, and the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO).

- A wicked, winding border -

The other thing they share is a twisting, knotting 971-kilometre (604 mile) border, over a third of which is disputed.

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan's general shapes on the map were cast by Soviet planners during the rule of Josef Stalin.

According to a 2002 International Crisis Group report on Central Asian border conflicts "Soviet planners often avoided drawing more homogeneous or compact republics for fear they would fuel separatism".

The maps were redrawn on several occasions to accommodate economic arrangements between the republics, but never with the view that they would become fully independent countries.

The result is oddball territories like Tajikistan's Vorukh, an "exclave" joined to the rest of the country via a road running through Kyrgyzstan, which was at the epicentre of Thursday's fighting.

Kyrgyz and Tajik clashes, sometimes limited to stone-throwing between villagers, sometimes fatal and drawing in military forces, have grown more common in recent years.

In July 2019, a Tajik man was shot dead and several people were injured after groups clashed following tit-for-tat flag-raising in a typical border incident.

This week's fighting, which Kyrgyzstan said saw massive military mobilisations by both sides, was of a different level entirely.

- Water is scarce too -

The triggers for Thursday's eruption of violence are still unclear, but it was prefaced by a scuffle about river infrastructure.

Tensions between villages over management of water resources tend to grow after winter, when the irrigation season begins.

While the Fergana Valley that the two countries share with Uzbekistan has a millennia-old reputation as an agricultural heartland, it is also increasingly crowded and dependent on two strategic, glacier-fed rivers under threat from global warming.

   - Conflicting information   -

Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan blamed each other for the outbreak of fighting and their accounts continued to differ into Friday, with Tajikistan insisting it was observing the ceasefire even as provincial Kyrgyz authorities said both sides were still shooting "periodically".

Tajikistan, a closed authoritarian state, called on citizens not to respond to the "provocations" of media in Kyrgyzstan, who were able to cover the conflict more freely.

Whilst Kyrgyzstan updated its casualty count regularly, Tajikistan did not acknowledge any of its citizens dying, or the damage that Kyrgyzstan said Tajik forces and citizens had inflicted on Kyrgyz homes, shops and border posts.

- What happens next? -

As the two poorest economies in the former Soviet bloc, they can ill afford a protracted conflict.

Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon and Kyrgyz counterpart Sadyr Japarov spoke by telephone on Friday and agreed to meet in the near future, while a joint commission on border delimitation will gather on Saturday.

But by long-ruling Rakhmon's own admission, more than a hundred rounds of negotiations have failed to result in a border that both countries can agree on.

For as long as the frontier is contested, the risk of further flare-ups will remain.

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