On Thursday 3rd October 2024, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) of the United Kingdom announced that British sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago would be resigned and that the islands would be ceded to Mauritius, an independent archipelago east of Madagascar. The move came following more than ten rounds of negotiations that began during the Liz Truss government in November 2022.
While the historic agreement will see a transfer of power of the islands to Mauritius, the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia, the largest island of Chagos, will be leased back to the United States and the United Kingdom for ninety-nine years. The British Government has stated that the agreement will guarantee the long-term relationship between the UK and Mauritius while shutting down the possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route.
While this is how the British government is spinning the turnover to the public, it is hard to fathom whether there is any conclusive evidence to suggest that the move will “shut down’’ such routes. In essence, this public statement issued by the FCDO at the direction of the Starmer government is an attempt to sell the deal to an electorate concerned with migration.
While the deal is bound to be unpopular with the wider British public, who on the whole will see the agreement as a resignation of Britain’s soft power, the deal also came under significant criticism from politicians during the negotiation process. The London-based think tank Policy Exchange published a thorough objection to the transfer of sovereignty in 2023. The report, written by Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu, Dr. Tom Grant, Professor Richard Ekins KC (Hon) and forwarded by Admiral the Lord West of Spithead GCB DSC PC, concluded that “An agreement with Mauritius to surrender sovereignty over the Chagos Islands threatens to undermine core British security interests, and those of key allies, most notably the United States’’ and advised that the UK government should “make it clear that the Chagos Islands will not be ceded to Mauritius.’’
The report noted that the Islands have belonged to the United Kingdom since 1814, had never been part of Mauritius as an independent nation, and are located 2,152 kilometers from the country. The Chagos Archipelago, while part of the same British-administered colonial department as Mauritius prior to Mauritius’ independence in 1965, was split off into a separate British territory, creating the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), before Mauritius became independent. The report makes clear that Mauritius abandoned any claim to the Chagos Islands in exchange for three million pounds in 1965 and that the first post-independence leader of the country, Sir Seewoosagur, described the Chagos Islands as “a portion of our territory of which very few people knew… which is very far, and which we had never visited.”
The Policy Exchange text rightfully pays homage to the legitimate grievances of the descendants of Chagossians who were expelled, with Mauritian consent, from Diego Garcia in 1971 when the UK/US air base was established. Today, almost all residents of the Chagos are American and British soldiers or military contractors on Diego Garcia, while the Chagos diaspora primarily resides in Mauritius. However, this grievance has been manipulated by successive Mauritian governments since the 1980s, which have conflated the grievances of the descendants of the expelled Chagossians with Mauritian self-interest; suffice to say, though most reside in Mauritius, the Chagossians do not see the Mauritian government as working on their behalf.
Furthermore, the most striking revelation in the report notes the exclusion of Chagossians from the negotiations. Chagossians, often subject to discrimination and racism in Mauritius, have opted in large numbers to settle in the UK. To back up this claim, the report quotes Chagossian activist Rosy Leveque who states that “the descendants I’ve spoken to in Mauritius do not support Mauritius sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. Chagossians should be given the same respect as the Falkland Islands – a referendum.”
The report states that the British government entered these negotiations without taking into consideration the views of Chagossians, despite having been advised to do so by a non-binding ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Additionally, the sitting Labour government demonstrated their willingness to exacerbate the transfer by appointing Jonathan Powell as the Prime Minister’s Special envoy to the negotiations. A relic of the Tony Blair years, Powell was Chief of Staff to Tony Blair for the entirety of his premiership and led the negotiations of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland. That such a prominent Labour representative saw to the end of British sovereignty over Chagos indicates that the Starmer government went out of its way to accelerate the downsizing of Britain’s role in global diplomacy.
For the United Kingdom, the cession of the British Indian Ocean Territory will undermine the UK’s security and strategic interests while chipping away at Britain’s international standing and ability to play a significant role in global diplomacy. Furthermore, the agreement will serve as a motivation for Spanish claims to Gibraltar and Argentinian claims to the Falklands; officials in Buenos Aires have already repeatedly used the UK’s openness to negotiate with Mauritius following pressure from the ICJ as a platform to open their own cession negotiations. The cession also poses significant challenges for Washington; an important military base formerly on the soil of an ally is now merely being leased from Mauritius, a country susceptible to Chinese influence.
Ultimately, the transfer wouldn’t have occurred without the agreement and complicity of the United States. While this may heighten the appetite of cynics who claim the United Kingdom is nothing but an American vassal, Americans would be wise to reflect on how this agreement affects their nation’s geo-strategic interests and ultimately gives a significant insight into the ideology that encompasses the Biden administration. Rather than apply a realist approach to the situation, the Biden Administration has been motivated by a warped decolonial dogmatism and will now have to navigate the close political relationship between Mauritius and China on its strategic base on Diego Garcia.
The agreed lease, now sold as a diplomatic victory, is likely to face on-the-ground challenges from Chinese intelligence.