The US and Uzbekistan initially signed an agreement that let them use the base for free. Then the Uzbeks wanted money, so we started paying ~$20million a year.

The US and Uzbekistan initially signed an agreement that let them use the base for free. Then the Uzbeks wanted money, so we started paying ~$20million a year. Relations got really bad after the Andijan Massacre. The US government (state department and congress) was REALLY critical of Uzbekistan and talked a lot about human rights abuses and cutting aid. Maybe that's where you're getting the $500 million figure from? Canceled aid payments that were conditional on the government making humans rights improvements, not the use of the base? Anyways, 2 months after Andijan and one day after the first planeload of refugees got a flight to Romania, the US received an eviction notice. We continued to pay the rest of the lease, and actually delivered a final $22.9 million payment after we got the eviction notice, days before the final Americans left.[1] If you want to read a description of events that is still biased, but in the other direction you can see the Air Force's timeline of what happened [2]. [1]: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/12/why-did-we-send-millions-to-a-dictator-who-kicked-us-out.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/12/why-did-we-send-... [2]: https://www.airforcemag.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/2010/September%202010/0910out.pdf https://www.airforcemag.com/PDF/MagazineArchive/Documents/20...