WHO LOST CENTRAL ASIA?

Tue Mar 29, 8:31 PM ET

by Ted Rall

U.S. Again Sides with Dictatorship over Democracy

NEW YORK--When you think "Jockey," you think "tidy whities." But a few years back, far from the prying eyes of Western business writers, in the dusty capital of the remote former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, Jockey tried to reinvent itself as a high-end men's formalwear designer.

Electricity was spotty and civil war was raging in neighboring Tajikistan, but Kyrgyzstan was flush with loans from the International Monetary Fund. The mere existence of the Jockey store, overstaffed with supermodel-quality Kyrgyz women wearing identical black microminis, testified to the optimism infecting Bishkek during the giddy summer of 1997. ("Does anybody shop here?" I asked a salesgirl. She assured me that people did. "Do they ever buy anything?" She giggled nervously. An average Kyrgyz worker would have needed a decade's salary to take home a styling Jockey suit.)