The attempt by Uzbekistan’s dictator, Islam Karimov, at punishing America for pushing human rights reforms in the authoritarian state may well be a blessing in disguise for President Bush. According to press reports, Mr. Karimov gave America 180 days to leave the Karshi-Khanabad air base in protest of Friday’s use of the base by the United Nations to ferry refugees, who had fled the May massacre in the town of Andijan, out of the country. The State Department confirmed the Uzbek authorities had asked America to leave, but wouldn’t confirm why.

Uzbekistan has long been a sore point in the Bush administration’s war on terror, which links democracy and human rights at home to terror abroad, and therefore seeks to reform tyrannical states. Uzbekistan fits that bill as one of the world’s most repressive regimes. It’s ranked “Not Free” in Freedom House’s freedom rating, alongside the likes of Zimbabwe, Syria, and North Korea. Uzbekistan, however, was quick to offer assistance after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and gave America the use of the key base for missions in Afghanistan.

Tensions between the two states have been rising since America began pushing for an independent investigation into the May massacre of demonstrators in the town of Andijan. According to their own reports Uzbek troops killed 187 people. Opposition groups say around 700 people were murdered. The executive director of Freedom House, Jennifer Windsor, said that the massacre may represent “the bloodiest example of state violence since the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing in 1989.” The Uzbek regime claims the majority of people killed were armed Islamists, and only a few unarmed civilians were killed, while other reports state the majority were unarmed non-Islamist demonstrators. Mr. Karimov has been blocking any independent investigation to find out what actually happened.

Following democratic revolutions in Georgia and other Eastern European states, Mr. Karimov has also been moving toward Red China and away from America. Christopher Brown, a research associate at the Hudson Institute, told The New York Sun that Mr. Karimov understands the democratic revolutions in Georgia and elsewhere were spurred on by America’s pressing for human rights reforms, and is determined not to lose power similarly in Uzbekistan. Moves to oust America from the country already started earlier last month, on July 7, when Uzbekistan announced it was reconsidering hosting America at the base. That announcement came two days after the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a Communist-Chinese-controlled military and economic group – said America should pull out of Uzbekistan.

If Mr. Bush is to withdraw American troops from the base in Uzbekistan, though, he has an option other than handing it over to the Uzbek authorities, who will use it to tighten their totalitarian rule. Instead, he could turn the base over to the democratic opposition.

We’re aware of concerns that Islamists are a powerful opposition force and that the nature of the theocratic regime they seek could be similar to Iran’s, and even worse than Mr. Karimov’s. But the choice between Islamism and authoritarianism is a false dichotomy. There is a third option, one that is pro-American and democratic. Handing the base in Uzbekistan to those forces would go some way to helping another democratic revolution, and would signal that America will not bow to dictators of either the Islamist or the non-Islamist variety.