[6] It is located about 4 km northeast of the road from Osh (Kyrgyzstan) to Xoʻjaobod (Uzbekistan) near the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border in the direction toward Qoʻrgʻontepa.

Uzbek forces dug up and blockaded the road to Ak-Tash,[8] while also seizing large areas of Kyrgyz land that allegedly had been loaned in the Soviet era but never returned.

"[13] Barak became an enclave when Uzbekistan forces blockaded the road leading to Ak-Tash, the nearest Kyrgyz village and the border connection on which it depends.

There, a chance meeting with Prime Minister Nikolai Tanayev led to Uzbekistan removing the concrete blockade and re-opening the road.

[16] The USSR's national-territorial delimitation of 1924–1927 was the first chapter of an ongoing story of twentieth-century border-moving, which continued beyond the Soviet Union's collapse.

[17] Although the Soviet era saw numerous demarcation commissions, none fully resolved questions regarding isolated territorial enclaves, temporary land leases that were never returned, unpaid rent agreements, and conflicting maps showing the borders running in different places.

[18] A similar situation exists along the Uzbekistan-Kyrgyzstan border, where before 1991 the Uzbek SSR had rented large amounts of land for agricultural and industrial use.

Daily cross-border life in the valley continued almost uninterrupted, with large borderland areas being used by the people of neighboring states.

[26] "On February 13, 1999, Uzbekistan's president, Islam Karimov, confirmed that the major Osh-Andijon cross-border bus service, along with many other routes in the Ferghana Valley, had been suspended.

… Closure of the border was accelerated three days later when a carefully-orchestrated series of bomb blasts rocked the Uzbekistani capital Tashkent, killing 16[.]

New control posts were built and existing facilities upgraded, and in many places crossings were closed, roads dug up, and bridges demolished.

"[27] In the summer, the neighboring Batken region of Kyrgyzstan was invaded by guerrillas of the so-called Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).

[28] Following this, the opposition press continued to carry numerous reports of Uzbekistan's border policies encroaching onto Kyrgyzstan.

[8] Throughout 1999, the Kyrgyzstani government did not physically attempt to contest the new border and concomitant control posts that Uzbekistan established.

[31] After the end of the IMU guerilla fighting in Batken, a new development emerged that threatened to spark an even graver crisis between the two states than the events in the spring.

This did not go unnoticed by Kyrgyzstani journalists and politicians, who persistently objected and accused Uzbekistan of advancing border checkpoints along roads into Kyrgyz territory.

This led to widespread accusations within Kyrgyzstan that Uzbekistan was actually fencing off tens of thousands of hectares of Kyrgyzstani land.

… Complex terrain and conflicting Soviet-era maps – printed at a time when defining the borders was not a pressing issue – present the toughest obstacle to delimitation.

[11] Talks resumed in 2018 and the two countries reached an agreement to exchange Barak for land in Uzbekistan's Andijon region near the Kyrgyz village of Birleshken (Ala-Buka District).

Progress followed decades of disputes, with officials emphasizing cooperation and addressing broader issues like water resources and bilateral relations.