Uzbekistan's human rights abuses have caused it to lose aid before. Last July, the US State Department withdrew most of its aid after failing to certify Tashkent had made progress to rectify its abuses.
But later that month, General John Abizaid, the top US commander in the region, flew to Tashkent to reassure the Uzbeks that the American military would maintain and even boost its cooperation -- aid that is separate from State Department assistance.
After the Andijan violence, Abizaid said the US military was scaling back operations at the Karshi-Khanabad base in southern Uzbekistan. But officers at the base told a visiting reporter that they hadn't noted any reduction in movement there.
The Uzbeks are now engaged in talks with Washington hoping to get compensation for use of the base, now rent-free for US troops.
Noting the base negotiations that could be a financial windfall for Uzbekistan, US-based Human Rights Watch expressed concern this week that Defense Department cooperation with the country continues, and that the European Union also gives some US$20.1 million in indirect assistance. Uzbek troops in Andijan were seen driving around in British Land Rovers.
"The US and the EU have to make clear that there will be real consequences for a cover-up if there is no independent investigation, and they have to set a deadline for it to take place," Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
The sentiment was echoed by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group think tank, which noted Thursday that despite the decline in US aid in recent years, there is a "widespread perception among Uzbeks that the US strongly backs an increasingly unpopular regime."
Regime abuses
"For too long [the international community] has ignored the abuses of the Karimov regime and the signs that trouble was brewing in the country," the group said in a report on the Andijan crackdown. "The failed policies of muted criticism -- and tacit support -- must be abandoned."
It's not clear if any immediate reconsideration of assistance is in the works. On Wednesday, US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington still is pressing for reforms and an open investigation into the Andijan violence, but that anti-terrorism cooperation with Uzbekistan would continue.
"It doesn't do any of us any good to abandon the effort against terrorism in this critical region," Boucher said. "So we will continue work with them in many areas, including the fight against terrorism."
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