Dub\u0103sari District is one very important anomaly worth paying attention to. It is located almost entirely on the left bank of the Dniester and is even named after one of Transnistria\u2019s largest cites, Dub\u0103sari. Nevertheless, this is a divided district, partly controlled by Romanian-speaking Moldovan leaders, and partly being under subordination of Transnistrian de facto authorities. The Chi\u015fin\u0103u controlled green areas on the map below cut deep into the secessionist violet areas and thus having at least a theoretical potential to seriously disrupt north-south connections and transportation links within Transnistria.<\/p>\n
![\"Dubasari](\"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/398\/dubasari-218x300.png\")
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Image: Contested Dub\u0103sari District (Source: Aotearoa)<\/p>\n
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This district has a unique history. According to primary research from Keith Harrington, a PhD candidate at Maynooth University, during the war in Moldova, the local predominately ethnic Moldovan populations created armed groups. These included the Scorpions in Cocieri and the Burunduk in the Dub\u0103sari suburb of Corjova. These native militias were armed by local police and fought against the separatists. The successful defense of their villages didn\u2019t go unnoticed; party leaders from the time of the resistance retained power for a long time, and many militia members were integrated into the gendarmerie of the Moldovan military, the Trupele de Carabinieri.<\/p>\n
After the war, as the Transnistrian de facto state took shape, the messy borders began to cause problems. For example, Cocieri, a left-bank settlement which acts as the seat of the Chi\u015fin\u0103u controlled district, doesn\u2019t have direct road-access to Moldova proper. It is largely dependent on a ferry which regularly crosses the river, but which services can be delayed<\/a> depending on water levels. The water levels are, perhaps inconveniently, controlled by the nearby hydroelectric dam under separatist supervision. If locals want to reach the rest of Moldova by other means, they must cross through secessionist territory.<\/p>\n The borders have also led to other problems. In the mid-1990s, Transnistrian forces began harassing Moldovan farmers who needed to cross Transnistrian controlled roads to reach their fields. The question of farmland access in these Moldovan offshoots was central in negotiations between the two sides. Access was routinely denied, then sporadically granted depending on the state of relations. In 2006 an agreement<\/a>, overseen by the OSCE, was signed; it granted Moldovan farmers access to their land so long as they register themselves with local Transnistrian authorities. All registrations were due to expire in 2009, but it took another five years before farmers could apply for new registrations to legally access their land, and it took another four years before these registrations were finally approved. This occurred in 2018 after Chi\u015fin\u0103u and Tiraspol signed a new agreement<\/a>. Despite the Moldovan government standing up strongly for these farmers in the past, it seemed as though Chi\u015fin\u0103u had since largely lost interest in the areas. The OSCE barely noted the problem, and farmers were only offered a small compensation for the lost time.<\/p>\n Access to farmland wasn\u2019t the only emotionally charged issue in Dub\u0103sari District throughout the years of regular negotiations. In 2004, Transnistrian police moved a border checkpoint near the southern of the two exclaves. The 200m move, known as the Doro\u0163caia crisis<\/a>, was criticized by the Moldovan authorities but largely ignored by Russian \u2018peacekeepers\u2019 meant to stabilize the conflict. The crisis almost led to a new breakout of active conflict. The Moldovan negotiators set the issue on the top of the to-do list, but a solution was never reached. Despite the tension, Russian troops didn\u2019t change their stance, and Moldova was quick to drop the issue and forgot it ever even existed.<\/p>\n Although the recent parliamentary elections in Moldova show that the Dub\u0103sari District was largely supportive<\/a> of Maia Sandu\u2019s pro-European party, there has been opposition against Chi\u015fin\u0103u\u2019s endeavors in the past. After Moldova signed the Association Agreement with the EU, there was significant tension in the settlement of Doro\u0163caia over the idea of ditching Moldova<\/a> to join the separatist de facto state. Many residents in the area fear the real threat of worsening relations with Russia and Transnistria should Moldova continue its pro-Western path; as previously mentioned, access to their land is largely dependent on the state of relations between Chi\u015fin\u0103u and Tiraspol. Many rely on growing food to eat and sell, and if Transnistrian authorities are the ones to provide that access it\u2019s easy to understand why some villagers would prefer living under Tiraspol\u2019s jurisdiction. The higher pensions in Transnistria add to the attractiveness of the idea. Despite past strong pro-Moldovan sentiment and active opposition to the separatists in the region, in an interview, even the mayor of Doro\u0163caia<\/a> didn\u2019t deny he would join Transnistria, but only noted his concerns over the border should they join the secessionists.<\/p>\n Despite the memory loss in Chi\u015fin\u0103u, it is precisely the locals in the Dub\u0103sari District that can\u2019t forget about their geographic location. They are regularly reminded of their status as Moldovans whose lives exist at the whims of the de facto authorities in Tiraspol. Many in the region interact with Transnistrian police daily as they cross the border to access their land or to reach Dub\u0103sari for work. Due to the pandemic and Transnistrian border closures, Moldovan farmers were again denied<\/a> access to their land, and numerous Transnistrian border posts began to pop up, some seeming to encompass entire Moldovan villages<\/a>. The TMR government cited concerns over health as the primary justification. After outcries from local Moldovan authorities, the central government in Chi\u015fin\u0103u, again, only offered small compensation for their economic loses.<\/p>\n Image: Transnistrian border post pop-ups (Source: http:\/\/novostipmr.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Another anomaly worth paying attention to is Varni\u0163a. The town is a suburb of Bender (Tighina), one of the right-bank settlements under Transnistrian control. Varni\u0163a had previously been fought over, but, similar to the story from the Dub\u0103sari District, it was local Moldovans who resisted and were able to keep their village under Moldovan control. Nevertheless, already in 2007 after disputes between businessmen, the Transnistrian police occupied<\/a> two businesses in Varni\u0163a and held them under their control. Years later, ahead of the Association Agreement summit in Vilnius, then Transnistrian president Shevchuk published a decree on the TMR\u2019s borders which claimed that Varni\u0163a and the villages under Moldovan control in the Dub\u0103sari District (on the left bank) rightfully belonged to Transnistria<\/a> and the separatist state would work hard over the coming months to achieve control over their entire territory. The Moldovan government criticized this harshly, but, at the end of the day, it was the locals themselves that prevented Transnistrian authorities from planting new border posts around their village and not the empty words from Chi\u015fin\u0103u.<\/p>\n Throughout the last decades in both the Dub\u0103sari and Tighina Districts, the Moldovan government has proven to be mostly passive and sometimes outright careless in protecting the rights and needs of those Moldovan citizens. Considering the history of the active pro-Moldovan resistance in these places, the Moldovan government is doing them a disservice. Furthermore, it would be in Chi\u015fin\u0103u\u2019s interest to actively integrate them into negotiations with Tiraspol and Moscow. After almost 30 years of separation, the citizens of Cocieri, Co\u015fni\u0163a, Varni\u0163a, and Doro\u0163caia are some of the few actors left that are negatively affected by the continued existence of Transnistria. They have collective experiences in dealing with Transnistrian authorities that anyone from B\u0103l\u0163i, Orhei, or Chi\u015fin\u0103u can hardly imagine, let alone relate to. Moreover, in the long-lasting stalemate that is the Moldovan-Transnistrian conflict, locals in these districts still have very real stakes in negotiations: their land, their businesses, their language, and their access to Chi\u015fin\u0103u. Forgetting these settlements and disregarding them as unimportant villages due to size or economic importance is\u00a0shortsighted. This territory, its locals, and their governing officials could be the key to\u00a0revitalizing inter-Moldovan talks and to\u00a0providing fresh material for negotiations. If ignorance prevails, then why shouldn\u2019t Chi\u015fin\u0103u start thinking about land swaps and border corrections?\u00a0Losing \u2018forgotten\u2019 left bank villages and gaining \u2018refound\u2019 right bank Tiraspol controlled settlements in return could at least fix the messy geography.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Author: Lance Bradley<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 On the second of September 2021, Transnistria (TMR) celebrated 31 years of independence. This de facto independence from Moldova has seemingly been at a standstill since active fighting subsided in the early 1990\u2019s. Although most experts would …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dfsrublogposts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1829,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions\/1829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/defactostates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"PMR](\"https:\/\/sisu.ut.ee\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/398\/pmr_border_post-300x169.jpg\")
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