Osh Oblast

Osh Province (Ош областы, Ошская область) is a province (oblast) of Kyrgyzstan. Its capital is Osh. It is bounded by (clockwise) Jalal-Abad Province, Naryn Province, Xinjiang, China, Tajikistan, Batken Province and Uzbekistan.

Geography
Most of the population lives in the flat northern part of the Oblast, on the edge of the Ferghana Valley. The land gradually rises southward to the crest of the Alay Mountains, drops into the Alay Valley and rises to the Trans-Alai Range which forms the border with Tajikistan. In the east, the land rises to the Ferghana Range which is roughly parallel to the Naryn border. This area is drained by the Kara Darya which flows northwest to join the Naryn River to form the Syr Darya in the Ferghana Valley.

Highway M41 goes south over the mountains from Osh to the Tajik border. At Sary-Tash a branch goes east to the Chinese border crossing at Irkeshtam. The other main road goes west through the flat country to Batken Province.

Demographics
As of 2009, Osh Province (excluding Osh) comprised 3 towns (Nookat, Uzgen, and Kara-Suu), 2 urban-type settlement and 474 villages. Its de facto population, according to the Population and Housing Census of 2009, was 999,576. Of them, 82,841 people live in urban areas, and 916,735 in rural ones.

More than half of all Kyrgyzstan's Uzbeks live in Osh Province. They are 33% of the provincial population as opposed to 14,5% in Kyrgyzstan as a whole.

Ethnic composition
According to the 2009 Census, the ethnic composition of the Osh Province (de jure population) was:

Districts of Osh Province
Osh province is divided administratively into 7 districts (listed counter-clockwise):

Enclaves and exclaves
The only exclave of the Kyrgyz Republic within Uzbekistan is administratively part of Osh Oblast (Kara-Suu Rayon). This is the tiny village of Barak (population 627) in the Fergana valley, located on the road from Osh (Kyrgyz Republic) to Khodjaabad (Uzbekistan) about 4 km north-west from the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border in the direction of Andijan.