After decades of wrangling over the fate of the Chagos Islands, and the key US-UK military base they host, the British government has agreed a deal to hand over sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius.
The Diego Garcia atoll – the biggest of the islands, which covers just 10 square miles of dry land – serves as a strategically important base for navy ships and long-range bomber aircraft.
Since the island’s population was exiled in the 1960s, with foreign military personnel taking their place, few have been allowed access to its shores, allowing rumours to swirl about what goes on there.
Walter Ladwig III, an international relations lecturer at King’s College London, told the BBC that while the base serves ‘a lot of important roles’, the level of secrecy surrounding it ‘seems to go beyond what we see at other places’.
Around 1,000 miles from the nearest landmass, with no commercial flights allowed to land and those wanting to step foot on the island needing a permit, very few have been allowed to stay there.
Journalists have been banned for decades, with one even ejected from its shores by ‘hostile’ British officials after pretending his boat ran into trouble. ‘Go away and don’t come back,’ he was told, as he was escorted off.
For the first time, US and UK authorities recently granted permission to reporters to stay on Diego Garcia, allowing them a glimpse of what life on the island is really like.
The British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) or Chagos Islands. The largest island in the archipelago is Diego Garcia
US Naval Construction Battalion – known as the Navy ‘Seabees’ – bathe at the swimming pool on Diego Garcia in an archive image from 1981
The paradise island is home to British and American troops and foreign contractors, with the cultural influences of both said to be apparent everywhere.
The entrance of the base’s airport terminal is reportedly decorated with Union Jacks and pictures of British figures such as Winston Churchill.
There is also a nightclub called the Brit Club, which has a bulldog as its logo, while patriotic street names include Britannia Way and Churchill Road.
British police cars are present, but drive on the right-side of the road, while the dollar is the accepted currency.
There is said to be a cinema, a bowling alley, a fast food restaurant and even a gift shop which sells Diego Garcia mementos – despite the lack of tourists.
Most personnel living on the island are American, with there only said to be a ‘token British presence’.
The island was leased by the UK to the US in 1966 for an initial period of 50 years, before this was extended, and was set to lapse in 2036 before the latest agreement.
The new agreement with Mauritius is set to guarantee the two countries’ rights to operate the military base for at least the next 99 years.
The 1966 deal had multiple perks for Britain – it was able to strengthen its military ties with the US, providing one of its key allies with an important base on a major international trade route.
Its position meant it later proved critical to American air operations during the Gulf War and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with aircraft sent directly from the island during the ‘war on terror’.
As part of its secretive deal, in exchange for use of the island, the US agreed to give the UK a $14m discount when it bought its Polaris nuclear missiles.
Aerial image showing roads buildings and forest on Diego Garcia Islands in the Indian ocean
Official first day ‘Ships of the Islands’ British Indian Ocean Territory stamps from 1969
A Foreign Office memo in 1966 stated that the object of its plan ‘was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls’.
They looked at multiple options but settled on Diego Garcia as the ‘prime location’ due to its strategic positioning in the middle of the Indian Ocean as well as its lack of a large population.
But for the more than 1,000 people who lived there, the decision was devastating.
The islands had been uninhabited until the late 18th century, when the French established coconut plantations and brought slaves from Madagascar and Mozambique to work on them.
Ruins of the plantations are preserved on Diego Garcia, with roaming wild donkeys described as a ‘ghostly remnant of the society that had been there for almost 200 years’.
Over that time, emancipated slaves and their descendants – known as Chagossians -built their own communities, and with them developed a distinct language and culture.
More than 1,000 people lived on Diego Garcia before it was taken over and turned into a US-UK military base
Undated picture realeased by the U.S. Navy shows an aerial view of Diego Garcia
The islands, which were British Indian Ocean Territories from 1814, were described by people who lived there as a happy and plentiful place to live, where ‘everyone had a job, his family and his culture’.
But by 1973, Chagossians were forced to leave the central Indian Ocean territory to make way for the military base, with many shipped off to Mauritius or the Seychelles.
The expulsions are regarded as one of the most shameful parts of Britain’s modern colonial history and Chagossians have spent decades fighting to return to the islands.
Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968, and has maintained since that the islands belong to it.
For decades the small island nation struggled to gain international support, but in 2019, the UK’s claim of sovereignty was ruled to be illegal by the UN’s highest court, which told Britain it had to hand the islands back as soon as possible.
Under the new treaty, Mauritius will now be able to bring in a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands – while still accepting the use of Diego Garcia as a military base.
