Chagos Return to Mauritius: Fait Accompli Pleasing Nobody

Mainly, the US keeps its remote, hidden forward base

By: Andy Wong Ming Jun

What would otherwise have been a happy case of resolving historical territorial disputes over the remote Chagos Island specks 500-odd km. south of the Maldives has instead turned into a farce, with angry recriminations from British domestic political opposition and displaced Chagossians following the latest announcement of Britain’s ceding of the islands to Mauritius after decades of disputed possession and forced relocation of the native population during the depths of the Cold War.

The big question, and arguably the only one, is the future of the tiny Diego Garcia atoll, of which only 27 sq. km. is dry land, but which serves as the US’s forward base in the Indian Ocean. Under the current handover terms negotiated between the UK and Mauritius, it will stay in US hands via a 99-year lease. However, there is speculation that China could potentially negotiate with Mauritius to get themselves a base in the islands right next to Diego Garcia, to bedevil the Americans if for no other purpose. That is regarded as remote since the Chinese already have a base of similar purpose in Djibouti City.

Since 1971, after the indigenous inhabitants were forcibly removed, Diego Garcia has been populated only by employees of the US military, including American civilians. The atoll is bristling with American military equipment including, among other things, two runways capable of handling B-1B and B-52 bombers, advanced listening equipment, radomes, antennas, and the US Marine Pre-Positioning Squadron Two, a major armed force with tanks, armored personnel carriers, munitions, fuel, spare parts and even a mobile field hospital.

Previously simply known as the “British Indian Ocean Territory” (BIOT), the development of Diego Garcia into what is known as the UK-US Permanent Joint Operating Base (PJOB) Diego Garcia proved significant for US global power projection in the Indo-Pacific region, particularly as the “Malta of the Indian Ocean.” With successive US setbacks and challenges from the late 1960s to early 1980s, real or perceived, ranging from the closing of military listening posts in Pakistan and Eritrea to the fall of Saigon and ultimately the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the strategic value of Diego Garcia increased dramatically for the US in retaining a toehold to influence matters in the Indo-Pacific region.

Besides being built up as an important island base for US strategic bombers, Diego Garcia also proved significant as a basing area for US and coalition forces in the run-up to both Gulf Wars against Iraq, as well as various counter-terrorism operations during the two-decade-long Great War on Terror against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Southwest Asia. For the UK, the securing of the islands was pivotal in the quid-pro-quo secret deal of a US$14 million discount for the UK purchase of Polaris nuclear missiles for its nuclear deterrent capability in the 1960s.

As part of a mutual UK-US defense strategy formulated in the 1960s, the UK bought over the islands from what was then the self-governing colony of Mauritius for £3 million in 1965 before granting Mauritius its independence in 1968. However, the legality of the purchase would later be disputed, resulting in a landmark decision by the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, in 2019 which unanimously declared the UK’s control violated international law.

“The process of decolonization of Mauritius was not lawfully completed when that country acceded to independence…the United Kingdom is under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible,” said the non-binding Advisory Opinion issued by the ICJ on 25 February 2019.

Although the ICJ ruling was non-binding, fears persisted in both London and Washington that the crushing 116-6 UN General Assembly vote backing a motion endorsing the ICJ ruling would be but the first step by Mauritius or countries in the African Union to pursue further international law rulings forcing the UK to give up control of the islands. The worry was not so much in losing the other mostly-uninhabited islands of no economic value but of losing the Diego Garcia military base, which had been painstakingly built up over the past decades at a time when China is engaged in a global chess game of overseas basing in strategic locations with the US.

There have been reports claiming that outgoing US President Joe Biden and senior US officials had pressured the UK’s new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer into “signing away the islands” so as to maintain the “special relationship” between the UK and US. UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy implicitly confirmed as much in a House of Commons statement on October 7 stating that “It’s critical for our national security. Without security of tenure, there will be no base. The deal benefits us, the UK, the US and Mauritius.”

In perhaps a telling attempt at selling the case of giving up the Chagos Islands to Mauritius to the anticipated backlash from the Conservative Party, now in opposition following the July 2024 general election, Lammy said the decision was the culmination of 11 rounds of negotiation first initiated in November 2022 by Tory Foreign Secretary James Cleverly and continued on by Lord Cameron up to mere weeks before the recent general election. The current Labor government has thus seemingly telegraphed an underlying message of merely fulfilling a fait accompli left as their foreign policy inheritance by the previous Tory government, and hence by extension sought to implicitly wash their hands of political ownership of the decision to cede the islands back to Mauritius.

Domestic political backlash to the handover to Mauritius has by and large been deemed as performative in nature, being lampooned by political satirists pithily: “Many who last week couldn’t have got within 500 miles of Mauritius on a map now can’t bear it taking the archipelago.” However, the decision has not gone down well with displaced Chagossians living in the UK, many of whom have decried the secretive nature of the sovereignty negotiations between the UK and Mauritian government, which has been accused of various human rights abuses and racial discrimination against displaced Chagossians deposited against their will thanks to British forced relocation in the 1960s and 1970s. In February 2024 Human Rights Watch submitted written evidence to the UK Parliament expressing concerns regarding the lack of meaningful consultation with displaced Chagossians living outside of Mauritius, as well as limited to no references being made about securing the right to return for displaced Chagossians.

The desire to return to the islands among its displaced natives, especially those residing in the UK, is not uniform: some are too old and infirm to go home. Most of the older generation are worried that the desire to redress a historic wrong will be snuffed out with the passage of time, and young Chagossian descendants have no interest in returning to their ancestral home territory beyond holiday trips. By a cruel twist of fate, anger towards the British political class regarding their handling of the Chagos Islands issue has also taken on a partisan political tone. In the words of the 67-year-old head of Chagossian Voices Bernadette Dugasse, “I don’t trust the Labor government…It was a Labor government that [first] put us in this situation. I don’t know why Labor is always punishing us.”