Uzbekistan visit gives war a face

To support their strikes against the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, American troops are using the Central Asian nation of Uzbekistan as a launching pad for humanitarian and search-and-rescue missions. More than a decade ago I spent a week in Uzbekistan. Among my memories are the stunning mosques and simple, friendly people.

One man, who leaned heavily on his cane while tending sheep, was a veteran of the Soviet army's fight against Afghanistan. He explained that he didn't want to fight fellow Moslems in Afghanistan. Instead of fighting, he traded his gun for goods. He and the rest of his troop were returned home and replaced by Russian troops from the north, but not before he was injured in an ambush by a group of Afghans he thought he had befriended.

I spent time in three main areas of Uzbekistan and crossed the border to visit a market in Tajikistan for a day. The Arabic languages Uzbek and Farsi were the native spoken languages, and Americans were warned not to stray too far from the group. But my broken Russian was about the same level as that spoken by most of the Uzbeks I met. And because of the similar struggle with a common language, I found it easy to befriend strangers and wander together with them talking about life and family. I was treated to small cakes and sweet tea, given books and offered a fish, wrapped in a newspaper, to take on a plane with me.

I was also offered opportunities that I turned down. Among these were hashish. And a trade: a camel, goat and three sheep for the blond-haired girls in our tour group. The hashish was easy to decline, but some of the boys I was traveling with thought it might be neat to own a camel.

These are devastatingly poor corners of the world. Open sewers run along the sides of the street. Teeth are bad. Deaths at childbirth common.

But there is beauty there too. The exotic curves of green and blue mosques tower above the skyline. Children play in the street kicking a soccer ball and pick flowers from a field. The faces of old men and women and young couples glow when they are smiled at. But taking a picture is forbidden: "It steals a part of the soul," one woman said while admonishing my request to photograph her.

I don't remember the food I ate while in Uzbekistan -- outside of kefir, a tasty yogurt drink -- so it must have been neither memorably good nor bad. What I do remember is a people struggling for their identity in the shadow of the Soviet Union, caught in the middle of a war, trying to live as simple a life as they had always lived, where prices were counted on an abacus and no one knew of a photocopier.

What I think about now, though, is how proud I am to be an American and how proud I am of our leaders. In conjunction with our attacks upon the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, we offer our hand in friendship to these people -- in Uzbekistan and Afghanistan -- caught in war. At extraordinary expense and risk of life we deliver humanitarian aid, medicine and food rations to the countryside of the very nation that harbors the terrorists who masterminded the killing of innocents here in America.

It is the American way to help the oppressed. It is the terrorists' way to target civilians. No question: American bombing will lead to the deaths of civilians, and those deaths should be lamented. But there is no moral equivalency to waging war against military targets, where collateral damage is inevitable, versus the specific targeting of civilians, where innocent deaths -- and the more the better -- is the goal.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that President Bush rejected the initial U.S. military strategy, formulated during the Clinton presidency, of how to retaliate against terrorist attacks. Instead of responding immediately with a limited wave of cruise missiles aimed at terrorist camps, as the previous administration did to little effect, Bush slowed the response in order to build a coalition to achieve something broader and larger. It will also be riskier and more expensive in the short term.

War is ugly. But sometimes it is necessary. In the long run, striking against evil while helping the oppressed and building friendship and support for those who ally with justice promises a safer world not only for those in that corner of the world, but for us as well. I think of the smiling -- often toothless -- faces of those I met in Uzbekistan, and I picture their Moslem brothers and sisters in Afghanistan. Our nation is not at war against these people or their religion, and our president proves himself wise to make that clear. It is the terrorists we target.

Jon K. Rust is co-president of Rust Communications.