the big uzbek news this week is that the bush administration has penalized uzbekistan for its dismal human right record. congress requires the president to certify that uzbekistan has made progress in human rights before disbursing aid. if the president cannot certify that there has been progress, the country's aid package is cut back as a penalty. over the past few weeks, the state department has been holding hearings to decide whether to uzbekistan qualifies for certification. this week, they decided that the country did not making sufficient progress and cut its aid package by $18 million. to put that in perspective, last year the u.s. gave uzbekistan $86 million, so there is a real question whether this cut is enough to actually influence the government's behavior.
as always with uzbek news, nathan is all over this story, with excellent links and commentary here and here and here and here. chris is also promising further commentary.
as for my own views, i generally support using aid to try to influence democratic reform--both by funding projects that will tend to encourage reforms, and by cutting off other kinds of aid (military aid is the stuff that usually gets a dictator's attention, in my opinion) when they do not act as they want them to. so while i generally support the i idea of using aid as a carrot and a stick, there is also the question of whether the cut-off will be enough to encourage change in the country.
it appears that the aid targeted here is "nonweapons-related military spending, as well as various economic projects." other kinds of aid, like aid to democracy groups, health care funding, and money to secure nuclear-related sites are not affected. so there clearly is an attempt to keep the cut targeted. but is the loss of a small fraction of the overall aid enough to get karimov working to be re-certified? i have no idea.
