I hope you didn't give them money or matches. And did they drink your battery fluid? Uzbeks! They are the weak link in the Great Chain of Socialism.
I found the Uzbeks to be ordinary folks like us. They are the least Islamic of all Muslims in my opinion; we didn’t get any “sensitivity” training pre-deployment. The men liked their vodka and were ready to trade a liter for the latest Playboy (both highly illegal on base). Learning a little Russian went a long way when working together (I ran a welding & machine shop).
Many of the women were very attractive and did not dress according to Sharia. Bare midriff tops & hip hugger jeans were very practical in the furnace heat of Uzbekistan in summer. They spoke excellent English and there was none of the simmering hostility I have heard about in Arab countries.
We made two trips to Samarqand which was 100 miles away & felt perfectly safe; the terrain was like driving through Idaho.
It was only recently I saw the 1981 spoof about money & matches; comments from Uzbeks were quite angry. They told me they were a modern urbanized people, not riding ponies & living in yurtas in the desert.
One officer said, “In 1966 my Uzbek grandmother was wearing miniskirts, drinking vodka, and listening to the Rolling Stones”.
The Central Asian ‘Stans ironically benefit from 70 years of secular rule under the Soviets. It’s creeping Islam that will endanger their slow march to modernity.
We Americans agreed that Uzbekistan was a far milder place to be deployed in than Iraq or Afghanistan.