Thank you for your service there in Uzbekistan.
Re Tashkent:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2328370/posts
Interesting link. The head chaplain and several of us twice drove from our base near Karshi to Samarqand, 100 miles away. A few scattered villages and marketplaces along a two lane road through terrain like Idaho, but we felt completely safe. Base camp got got boring, sometimes, but not a bad tour otherwise.
Our State Department’s stupidities got us kicked out later in 2005; the Karshi-Khanabad base was razed to nothing but dirt soaked with old Soviet jet fuel. Too bad.