Five years after Uzbek troops opened fire on hundreds of protestors in the city of Andijan, experts say the Central Asian state has yet to be held accountable for one major reason -- Afghanistan. Members of the US-led military coalition -- eager to secure logistical support from Tashkent for operations in its war-wracked neighbour -- are effectively giving Uzbekistan a free pass over the bloody incident, analysts said. Any concerns Uzbekistan's right record may once have raised in Western capitals have long since been trumped by its geo-strategic importance, said Alexander Cooley, a Central Asia expert at Columbia University in New York. 'Not only has Uzbekistan not paid a price, but the Andijan incident has created significant divides within the EU and the United States regarding their Central Asia policy,' he told selfnews. 'One of the lessons learned by both the US and the EU was to dial back their public criticism of human rights abuses in Central Asian countries.' Uzbekistan, a majority-Muslim state located in the heart of Central Asia, was the earliest of Washington's regional partners following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Strongman President Islam Karimov granted the US military the use of a Soviet- era base on its territory, in return receiving training for its special forces and generous aid. In exchange, critics say, Uzbekistan's Western allies looked the other way when it came to investigating allegations of serious human rights violations in the ex-Soviet state. On May 12, 2005, hundreds of people gathered outside a provincial court in the city of Andijan in eastern Uzbekistan to demand the release of nearly two dozen popular businessmen accused of religious extremism. Overnight, a group of men attacked a police station and a military garrison in the city, seizing a cache of weapons, before freeing 500 inmates including the 23 businessmen. Then, on the morning of May 13, as thousands of Andijan residents -- including many women and children -- flocked to Babur Square in the city centre to support the uprising, Uzbek troops opened fire. Tashkent says that 187 people -- all of them members of Islamist militant groups -- were killed in the ensuing violence. Numerous international rights groups have put the number closer to 1,000, most of them civilians. Images of the violence led to public outrage -- US criticism would lead to Washington being ejected from its military base -- and shattered ties between Tashkent and the West for almost five years. But last year, despite Uzbekistan's continuing refusal to allow for an independent investigation into the events, the European Union declined to renew its last remaining sanctions against Tashkent. After then-Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiyev threatened to evict the US from a base in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan in 2009, Washington signed a deal with Tashkent to allow the transit of non-military cargo to the Afghan theatre. The lack of a concerted policy on how to deal with Uzbekistan plagued the international response from the start, Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch, told selfnews. 'The lesson Ive drawn from the unsuccessful Western response to the Andijan massacre is that any policy, whether or not in the form of sanctions, can be effective only if it has the full backing of all key governments,' he said. With Afghanistan topping US President Barack Obama's agenda and very few options if NATO wants to resupply its forces from Central Asia, experts say it was only a matter of time before Washington came back to Tashkent. The US military in particular has a very short 'institutional memory', said Sarah Michaels, a former US defense intelligence analyst and now senior editor for the ex-Soviet Union at Oxford Analytica, a Britain-based think tank. 'The real story here is frankly how insignificant (the response to Andijan) has been and how short memories are,' she said. 'Sadly, it is a repeat of past policy mistakes.' 