Battle over strategic US base takes new twist

Thousands of exiles from the isolated Chagos Archipelago—a cluster of atolls in the Indian Ocean that houses a critical American military base and is owned by Britain—may have won time in their seemingly hopeless fight to go home after the British government abruptly halted the passage through parliament of a bill to give it up.

The fight over the Chagos islands is of global strategic importance. The tiny islands, which Britain plans to hand to Mauritius, could also be a future launchpad for the ambitions of China, India or other countries given a location that makes them an ideal base for intervention in Africa, the Middle East and a swathe of Asia.

The bill on relinquishing the Chagos group was halted in Britain’s House of Lords, the upper house of parliament, rather than face a challenge that could have required the government to consult the Chagossians on their future. Britain’s foreign office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the government’s next move. Nor did the government of Mauritius.

“In the heart of this tragedy lies our people,” Frankie Bontemp, a member of Chagossian Voices, a rights group in Britain, told Newsweek.

The Chagossians, speaking from Britain, where many settled after being expelled decades ago to make way for the joint U.S.-British Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, were still skeptical that the move in parliament would allow them to go back to their islands, which lie 1,000 miles south of India and 1,250 miles from future ruler Mauritius.

The United Kingdom is expected to hand Chagos to Mauritius early next year, with a treaty signed between the two governments in May whereby Britain will pay Mauritius about $132 million per year for 99 years. The British government hopes to close a chapter of colonialism—but many Chagossians say it is merely opening another.

The agreement will preserve the base on Diego Garcia, the biggest island in Chagos, which houses submarines, B-2 bombers and a U.S. Space Force facility, and is considered one of the two most important U.S. island bases in the world alongside Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, America’s westernmost territory in the Pacific.

The base sits atop vital energy and trade routes to the Middle East, Africa and Asia, a highly strategic location in the increasingly contested Indo-Pacific region as China builds out its navy and pushes for influence globally against established western powers that include Australia and Japan as well as the United States.

India is a major player in the region and is influential in Mauritius.

Many members of the British opposition Conservative Party are also opposed to the handover. The proposed amendment in the House of Lords could have obliged the government to consult the Chagossians for 30 days, leading to the bill’s withdrawal by the Labour government.

“The opposition is raising some serious arguments that may get the attention of Washington,” Cleo Paskal, a nonresident fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Newsweek.

They included a potential nuclear issue, said Paskal, pointing to an African anti-nuclear weapons treaty: “For example, Mauritius is a signatory to the Pelindaba Treaty which commits it to not hosting nuclear weapons on its soil. If the agreement went into effect that would include Diego Garcia.”

But amid these swirling geostrategic interests are the Chagossians themselves, who today may number about 10,000—and who make the point that they are not from Mauritius and have no more connection to the country that will in future control their ancestral lands than they have to the current British rulers.

Under the terms of the agreement, Chagossians cannot return to Diego Garcia. Mauritius has the right to settle other locations in the archipelago that rise out of the reefs, but they are very few and very small.

“At the end, the U.K. and the U.S. got the most strategic base in the world,” Bontemp said. “For the next 99 years none of us can go there. We were sacrificed for the defense purpose of the Western world.”

“This is the real issue that needs to be fixed—why don’t we matter? We want to go home. Let us go. We are the custodians of the land,” said Chagossian Jemmy Simon.

About 1,500 Chagossians were forcibly evicted from the archipelago starting in the late 1960s, either to Mauritius or to the Seychelles, where they lived in poverty and say they experienced discrimination. Many later settled in Britain.

The treaty will also hand about $52 million to the government of Mauritius for dispersal among the Chagossians, but few expect the money to help much.

“We are the victims and we continue to be the victims, the British government, the Mauritian government, the U.S., they don’t give a damn about the Chagossian people. That’s what annoys me. You know, how can they ignore what’s happened to us?” said Bontemp.

“All the successive British governments keep on saying: ‘We deeply regret, deeply regret.”’ When you have the chance, you’re in government, you have a chance to correct injustice. They don’t have the will to do it…. What’s happening now is like the Chagossians are going to lose the island forever,” he said.

A separate, last-ditch attempt by Chagossians to stop the deal via a judicial review is currently before the High Court in London.