In 1965, the 2,000 residents of a tranquil Indian Ocean archipelago, 1,000 miles from the nearest landmass, fell victim to the last spasm of the desiccating British Empire. Desperate to prove its value to its imperial successor as one by one its colonies reclaimed their independence, the United Kingdom offered the Chagos Islands to the United States in what was the international equivalent of a human sacrifice.
This transfer began with its establishment of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) in December 1965. Despite the inoffensiveness of the official terminology – a kind of Western imperial Stalinism – this was a coercive measure that unilaterally separated Chagos from Mauritius and Seychelles for defence purposes, who had up to then exercised sovereignty over the archipelago. In the process, the United Kingdom forcibly depopulated the islands, shepherding their residents, who were not told that their expulsion would be permanent, onto over-crowded boats, and murdering their pets for good measure. Left uncompensated for many years, the islanders were scattered across Mauritius and the United Kingdom, robbed of their homeland and their heritage.
Although the United States publicly disavowed any role in the sacrifice – a lie that the United Kingdom, in desperate courtship of imperial favour, obsequiously upheld – it soon moved to establish a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest atoll in the archipelago. These facilities have proved a valuable imperial asset: first enhanced by the Carter administration, the base has repeatedly been used as launching ground for American bombing missions, including in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. In 2020, the Trump administration deployed six B-52 bombers to Diego Garcia as a means of threatening Iran.
In this context, it is no surprise that this week’s announcement that the United Kingdom will return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius has been met with howls of disapproval from the usual suspects in the mighty American military-industrial complex and its yapping British counterpart. The loss of the Chagos Islands would, indeed, be a serious blow, having repeatedly demonstrated their value as a means of imperial power projection.
But imperialists and warmongers need not fear, for this is not what has been agreed. It was never realistic to believe that a course of action initiated by the Conservative Party and finalised by a Starmer-led Labour government – both fully committed to imperial mythology – could have such radical implications. Indeed, Starmer has keenly disavowed any notion that the return of the islands might in any substantive way dilute their continued function as an arm of imperial power. “The single most important thing was ensuring that we had a secure base,” he said. Any positive benefit to the Chagossians themselves is, we must therefore assume, purely incidental.
image credit: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Str
Importantly, the military base on Diego Garcia will remain in place, and it is clear that Britain would not have countenanced giving up the archipelago had this not been the case. The agreement provides for the continuation of the base for “an initial period” of 99 years – which is to say, in practical terms, indefinitely – and the exiled Chagossians will not be permitted to return to Diego Garcia, despite the fact that it is by far the most habitable part of the archipelago. Britain appears to have won this provision by stuffing the Mauritian government’s mouth with gold – Mauritius will receive financial support and infrastructure investment in exchange for its forbearance (and can hardly be criticised for accepting such a deal, which after all is far more favourable to its interests than the status quo ante). The Chagossians themselves, however, were given no seat at the table in the forging of the agreement – which many have consequently branded a betrayal.
Advocates and critics of the agreement alike continue to frame it in terms of the imperial logic of national and global security. Starmer and the Mauritian Prime Minister, Pravind Jugnauth, have declared the base as playing a “vital role in regional and global security”, language echoed almost word for word in U.S. President Joe Biden’s claim that the facility “plays a vital role in national, regional, and global security.” Critics, meanwhile, warn that the Chinese menace could step into the political vacuum that the agreement will, supposedly, herald. This claim is not credible enough to warrant serious attention, but it is important to the extent that it demonstrates that both defenders and critics of the agreement continue to frame the fate of the islands through the imperial lens of ‘security’ – rather than one of justice, or of the welfare of the human beings who were torn from their home almost sixty years ago.
Not that critics of the agreement are alone in stretching credulity. Foreign Secretary David Lammy has attempted, cynically, to frame the treaty as an anti-immigration measure, claiming that it will close “a potential illegal migration route.” The word potential is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting there.
More encouragingly, the agreement pledges to “address wrongs of the past” – a vague but nonetheless important acknowledgement of imperial guilt – and to “support the welfare of Chagossians.” The devil will, of course, be in the detail, but this is a welcome commitment given that the latter community were, for so long, left to fall into poverty and destitution after being removed from their homes without any provision made for arranging new ones.
But nor should we fall into the trap of celebrating this as some kind of landmark victory for international law. The writing has been on the wall for decades now, with successive international legal judgements backing Mauritius’ claim to the islands over that of the United Kingdom, and it was only kicking and screaming that Britain has been brought to accept this agreement.
Nor is there any sign that Britain intends to relinquish its imperial control over the other outposts to which it continues to desperately cling around the world. Despite cynical right-wing efforts to claim that the Falklands, that pathetic symbol of British militarism, might be the next domino to fall, the islands’ governor Alison Blake is surely justified in declaring that Britain retains an “unwavering commitment” to the maintenance of its sovereignty there.
In sum, those of us committed to a genuinely radical vision of world affairs should make no mistake that this agreement continues to defer, rather than fulfil, justice for the victims of Britain and America’s imperial crimes, whatever pretence it might make to the contrary.