Continuing economic hardship in Kyrgyzstan is forcing citizens to make difficult decisions as they try to outpace poverty. The dilemmas are such that even those who attain a measure of prosperity are often dissatisfied.

"What I am doing is bad," said Marat. "For a Kyrgyz, trade is a shameful activity, and I feel guilty- but I need to look after my family. When I am 50 I will pack it all in, grow a beard, and make the pilgrimage to Mecca."

Marat's story is by no means an unusual one. The sharp fall in living standards following the collapse of the Soviet Union forced him to quit his job as a teacher and become a businessman.

Even though he has grown relatively rich by exploiting existing opportunities for trade with China, Marat's conscience is troubled by his new occupation. That is not only because the traditionally nomadic Kyrgyz look down on trading as a vocation, but also because of the wares he must deal in. For example, one of his major exports is sheep wool. The commodity has been exploited at unsustainable levels during the past decade, contributing to a dramatic decline in sheep populations in Kyrgyzstan.

Despite his own private reservations, Marat, and other traders like him, represent the future in the view of Kyrgyzstan's government. Officials hope to revive the economy by transforming Kyrgyzstan from a pastoral backwater into an international trading hub. The government's development strategy is based on the revival of ancient Silk Road trade routes. To achieve the development plan, the government has been working hard to build good relations with its neighbours, and has been successful in obtaining foreign support for an ambitious road improvement program.

In the new economic climate, the sum of individual activities has had a significant impact of the collective economic atmosphere. In the case of the wool trade, the decline in the number of sheep has led to the migration of large numbers of impoverished shepherds to towns and cities. There, they head for what have been nicknamed 'slave markets' -- streets where these men wait around hoping that someone will come and employ them for an hour or two as labourers. It is a wretched existence, and what money that is made is often spent on cheap liquor imported from China by people like Marat. "The opening of the borders has been nothing but bad," said one ex-shepherd who had not been employed for three days.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the country's new economic orientation is the export of scrap metal to feed China's booming economy. As readily available supplies are now drying up in Kyrgyzstan, traders are looking for new sources. While some people band together and hire diggers to dredge through urban waste-dumps – supported by a whole entourage of food and drink sellers which have sprung up alongside - others have turned to illegal means, especially the organised theft of valuable copper wiring and telephone cables, disrupting communication systems.

The effect of this trade is beginning to be felt in Kyrgyzstan's other major neighbor -- Uzbekistan. Although the scrap metal trade is tightly controlled there, highly organised groups are robbing metals and smuggling them over the border to the Kyrgyz traders who export them legally on to China. A result of this can be seen in the town of Ferghana, where the trolley-bus has stopped working altogether, a major reason being the theft of sections of the overhead power supply cables.

This is just one of the tensions arising from the differing economic trajectories of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan- a process that, in spite of the positive rhetoric of both governments, is creating its own obstacles to the reopening of the Silk Road. Uzbekistan has retained many elements of the former Soviet-style planned economy, including generous state subsidies and a higher level of state involvement in agricultural production. Uzbekistan also has more raw materials than Kyrgyzstan, including significant oil and gas reserves, and a larger production base of daily household goods. The government of President Islam Karimov has sought to protect and encourage the country's production base, rather than leave it to the ravages of the free market.

This situation has led to a growing divergence of prices on either side of the border, with products like petrol being 30 percent, and cooking oil 50 percent higher in Kyrgyzstan than in Uzbekistan. Rather than sell Uzbekistan's 'white gold,' or cotton, at low prices to state collective enterprises, many farmers prefer to try and take it over into Kyrgyzstan and sell it for a higher price there. Another example of such trade is the sale of cheap foodstuffs provided by the government of Uzbekistan for institutions such as children's homes. To supplement the low incomes, these often find their way to the bazaars of Kyrgyzstan, where prices are higher.

Alarmed at this, Uzbekistan has taken measures to try and stem these flows. In 1999, the Uzbek government introduced tough border control measures including a partial militarization of the border zone with Kyrgyzstan, the introduction of stringent passport and customs regimes, and the near exclusion of Kyrgyzstani motor vehicles from Uzbek territory.

Uzbekistan's actions have had the effect of diminishing legal trade and raising the prices of foodstuffs in Kyrgyzstan, and it also has led to the mushrooming of smuggling. Almost anything can be brought "by order" from Uzbekistan, either by bribing officials or smuggling. This latter practice is risky, but as long as the price differentials remain so high and wages so low it is bound to continue.

Even when the border was completely closed and heavily patrolled for a number of days following the Tashkent bombings of February 1999, one group of smugglers managed to float their consignment of timber across into Kyrgyzstan plank by plank through an underground canal traversing the border. As one trader put it, "Even if you close the border a thousand times, people still have to make a living, don't they?"

Kyrgyzstan's President Askar Akaev has been very active in promoting regional economic integration as part of his "Great Silk Road Doctrine." This view contrasts sharply with Karimov's more cautious approach. At the Central Asian presidents' April summit, Karimov stressed that economic unification is vital but only 'when the security situation allows.' In the meantime, it is traders like Marat who are really reviving the ancient trading route. The images associated with this –'the slave bazaars', tea-shops by garbage dumps, rusting trolley-buses, rising alcoholism, wide-scale bribery- makes one ponder the wisdom of pinning hopes on free-market trading in the current political climate.