"Jim Webster" wrote in message
...

"Oz" wrote in message
...
Jim Webster writes

But let us look at it rationally.
1) there isn't a lot of point of them trying to do anything
agricultural
because even if they get the land right and yields up they are still
just
subsistance peasants producing commodity product. I cannot imagine
there
being a market for Tajik grain beer or melons.

It's cotton. Takes all the essential irrigation water, trashes the
environment. Ex-soviet megafarms, apparently.


I've seen the Aral sea from the air:-((

2) I would suspect that educational level/literacy is pretty good

I don't know, but I suspect not.

I have been to Uzebeckistan when it was still soviet and they had pretty
good levels of education, but I don't know whether this was general


so they
would happily train up to work in pretty well any industry. At the
moment
they would doubtless undercut pretty well most other labour pools.

No, because it's a full time job getting water, firewood and basic
foods.

That is what you have to break away from. The grinding poverty which
doesn't
actually give you time to get away from your grinding poverty

I have a friend whose husband works in Siberia for Halliburton. He has 3
secretaries that top one get $300 a month. They are pretty, intelligent and
very hard worker putting in more hour that they are paid. Because there are
a thousand more just a pretty, just as smart that will work just as hard
wanting the job. After Africa Siberia is the promised land.

Gordon