The Small Islands Caught in the Middle East Conflict

 

By Henry Srebrnik, Fredericton Dailt Gleaner

 

Sometimes very obscure places most people have never heard of assume importance as a byproduct of conflicts between faraway countries. And then they suddenly become front page news.

Such is the case of the Chagos Islands, an archipelago in the “middle of nowhere” – actually, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. And they have been a bone of contention between Great Britain and its former Indian Ocean colony of Mauritius for decades. What’s this all about and why is it suddenly so noteworthy?

It’s because of the current Middle East war. On March 20, Iran targeted the Indian Ocean military base jointly operated by Britan and the United States on Diego Garcia, one of the islands, with two ballistic missiles.

The U.S. has described the Diego Garcia base as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa. Britain initially refused to let the base be used for attacks on Iran, but after Iran responded with strikes on its neighbors, the U.K. said American bombers could use Diego Garcia.

The Chagos archipelago stretches more than 350 kilometres n the middle of the Indian Ocean; it is 500 kilometres from the Maldives, some 1,500 kilometres south of India, and even further from the Seychelles and Mauritius, to which it was attached when the latter was a British possession. The 55 little islands have a total land area of only 64 square kilometres and no longer have any native inhabitants.

Britain detached the archipelago from Mauritius in 1965, three years before that island state gained its independence. During the Vietnam war, the United States realised that a base on the 28 square kilometre island of Diego Garcia, at the southern tip of the archipelago, would allow it to intervene across a large part of the globe, and control major sea transport routes for hydrocarbons and raw materials.

So secret talks concluded with the United Kingdom in 1966 saw Washington lease Diego Garcia. Britain removed the local population, some 1,000 islanders, from the Chagos Archipelago, to make way for it. Shared with the U.K., it became Washington’s most important asset in the vast Indo-Pacific region west of Pearl Harbour.

The government of Mauritius had long argued that it was illegally forced to give the Chagos Islands away in return for its own independence from the U.K. in 1968. In June 2017 the United Nations General Assembly voted to ask the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the validity of their detachment from the territory of Mauritius, which became independent three years later. Mauritius told the ICJ that the territorial division had been accepted “under duress.”

In February 2019, the ICJ issued an historic advisory opinion declaring that the United Kingdom’s administration of the Chagos Archipelago was unlawful and that sovereignty should be returned to Mauritius. The court held that the detachment of the archipelago from Mauritius at the time of independence violated international law because it had not been based on a “free and genuine expression of the people concerned.”

It added that Britain had an obligation “to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible and that all member states must co-operate with the United Nations to complete the decolonization of Mauritius.” In 2021, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the Universal Postal Union also issued administrative rulings stating that Britain has no sovereignty over the islands.

Years of protracted negotiations between Whitehall and Mauritius then ensued with little progress -- but suddenly moved forward with lightning speed with the election of the new British Labour government in July 2024.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced a major agreement just three months later to transfer sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while securing the future of the joint U.S.-U.K. military base on Diego Garcia. Mauritius will be able to begin a program of resettlement on the Chagos Islands, though not on Diego Garcia.

But President Mohamed Muizzu of the Maldives has formally told the U.K. that it does not recognise the deal to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. “The government of the Maldives maintains the firm position that, by virtue of historical and geographical proximity, it holds a prior claim to sovereign rights over the Chagos Archipelago.”

The deal has also attracted criticism from the opposition Conservative Party in Britain and officials in the Trump administration in Washington. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the prime minister was “negotiating a secret deal to surrender British territory and taxpayers in this country will pay for the humiliation.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio worried the deal posed a “serious threat,” arguing it gives the islands to a country aligned with China. Mauritius has had a free trade agreement with China since 2019. Commerce between the two countries has increased tenfold since 2000 and nearly doubled in just the last three years. Both are explicitly committed to closer ties and signed a bilateral currency agreement at the end of 2024.

While the May 2025 deal still faces major criticism, Britain will most likely return the archipelago to Mauritius but allow the U.K. to retain administrative control over the base for 99 years – at a very hefty sum.