An agreement between the UK and Mauritius on the Chagos Archipelago is being hailed as a key step in decolonization, but the Diego Garcia island will remain a military base under US control.
The Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean should no longer be a formal British colony, following a long-awaited agreement between the United Kingdom and Mauritius. This agreement, reached after years of disputes in international courts and the United Nations, has been hailed by Western leaders as a significant step toward decolonization.
However, the news has left a bitter taste for hundreds of Chagossians, who were forcibly displaced by the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. Chagossian organizations have voiced concerns that they were excluded from the negotiations, leaving their key demands unaddressed. "The views of Chagossians, the Indigenous inhabitants of the islands, have been consistently and deliberately ignored," the organization Chagossian Voices stated.
In terms of the agreement itself, there is no mention of reparations, a critical demand voiced repeatedly by the displaced community, and no guarantee that their declared right of return will be upheld. Significantly, the most famous island in the archipelago, Diego Garcia, will remain off-limits to Chagossians for the next 99 years.
Diego Garcia is home to a United States military base. To enable its construction, lease and operation, the UK forcibly removed at least 2,000 people from the island, leaving them without access to justice for decades. The presence of the base has long been one of the main reasons the UK refused to comply with UN and International Court of Justice rulings to transfer sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius.
Read more: A US military base, a British occupation and a UN judgment for the decolonisation of Mauritius
It is little surprise, then, that the agreement includes a significant caveat ensuring the base remains under British jurisdiction and control, in close coordination with the United States. For an "initial period" of almost one hundred years, the UK will continue to administer Diego Garcia, "to ensure the continued operation of the base well into the next century."
British Foreign Minister David Lammy stated that the agreement with Mauritius will "strengthen our [UK] role in safeguarding global security" and "shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the UK."
US President Joe Biden welcomed the deal, describing Diego Garcia as essential for the US to "support operations that demonstrate our shared commitment to regional stability, provide rapid response to crises, and counter some of the most challenging security threats we face." The base has been used in numerous US-led wars, including those in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
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Clearly delighted with the retention of Diego Garcia, Biden said the agreement demonstrates that countries can reach "peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes" through "diplomacy and partnership," missing on the irony of invoking these categories in the context of holding on to a military site.
The "mutually beneficial outcomes" Biden referenced apparently include UK grant money and environmental protection efforts--previously used as a pretext to block Chagossians from returning to islands in the proximity of Diego Garcia--but not self-determination or reparations, which the community considers essential. This indicates that despite the formal nature of the agreement between Mauritius and the UK, there is still a long way to go until true decolonization.
