Trump moves to veto historic Chagos Islands deal
Publish date: 18 November 2024
Issue Number: 1103
Diary: IBA Legalbrief Africa
Category: General
The future of the Chagos Islands and a secretive UK/US airbase is set to be an early flashpoint between Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer as the President-elect seeks to veto the controversial deal signed off by the UK Prime Pinister and endorsed by Joe Biden. Legalbrief reports that Mauritius and the UK have confirmed the UK’s agreement to transfer the archipelago, including the island of Diego Garcia, back to Mauritius. While the agreement recognises the sovereignty of Mauritius over the seven atolls comprising more than 60 Indian Ocean islands, it also permits the UK to exercise such sovereignty on behalf of Mauritius in Diego Garcia for the next 99 years.
The Independent understands that Trump’s transition team has requested legal advice from the Pentagon over the agreement that handed the islands to Mauritius. US Government sources say Trump is looking to veto the deal, which is set to come into force after his inauguration in January, over global security fears. The row comes as part of an unfurling nightmare across the Atlantic for Starmer as the President-elect Trump appoints hardliners such as Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and, in a surprise move, Fox News presenter Pete Hegseth as Defence Secretary. Both men have criticised the Chagos plan and want to end support for Ukraine. The Chagos are seen as strategically important in southeast Asia. America uses the base on the atoll of Diego Garcia for ships and long-range bombers. A US Government official source told The Independent: ‘Trump has received a UK-sourced briefing on Chagos and has asked the presidential transition team to work with the Pentagon to get legal advice. He has expressed a stance in principle to object to the deal if elected on the advice of the Department of Defence based on their global security posture.’
BBC News reports that the UK's deal to cede sovereignty of the islands will be met with ‘outright hostility’ by the Trump administration, Nigel Farage has predicted. The Reform UK leader, a supporter and friend of the incoming US President, told MPs the agreement would put the UK at odds with an important ally. He added that Trump's advisers had security concerns, amid claims the deal could boost China's influence in the region. But Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty said he was confident the ‘full detail’ of the arrangement would allay concerns. The UK Government says the accord, which it hopes to ratify next year, will end legal uncertainty over the islands following international rulings backing Mauritian claims to sovereignty. But the strategic importance of the archipelago, known officially as the British Indian Ocean Territory, has prompted criticism that the agreement will deliver a security boost to China. ‘Diego Garcia was described to me by a senior Trump adviser as the most important island on the planet, as far as America was concerned,’ Farage told MPs last week. He said continuing with the deal would put the UK ‘at conflict with a country without which we would be defenceless’.
As a dependency of Mauritius, the Chagos archipelago was administered as a French colony from 1715 to 1814, and as a British colony between 1814 and 1965. In 1965, Britain promised to withdraw from Mauritius but not Chagos. Hence, Mauritius became independent in 1968 without Chagos, which became a British Indian Ocean Territory. In 1966, the UK leased Diego Garcia to the US for 50 years in exchange for a $14m discount on its purchase of nuclear-armed submarine-launched Polaris ballistic missile systems. A Moneyweb analysis notes that the UK and US wanted to keep the archipelago free from any political complications that could arise from the presence of indigenous populations. In the late 1960s and 1970s, inhabitants of the Chagos were exiled to Mauritius and Seychelles. Then the British Indian Ocean Territory banned Chagossians from returning to the islands. The ban was reversed in 2000, allowing Chagossians to return to the outer islands. But this was short-lived. The 2004 Immigration Ordinance reintroduced the restriction. In 1971, the US established a naval and air support base in Diego Garcia, which is jointly operated with the UK. About 4 000 US and British military and contract civilian personnel were reported to be stationed on the island since the military base was opened. In 2016, the UK extended the lease of the island to the US to 2036.
In October 2024, the UK decided to hand over its last colony in the Indian Ocean, leaving it with 13 other overseas territories elsewhere. This decision is the culmination of protracted legal, political and strategic struggles both locally and internationally. Several of the exiled Chagossians moved to the UK and became British citizens. This brought their plight to London. From the late 1990s, Chagossians had sued for their right to return home. In 2000, a court ruled against their claim to ownership. But it also nullified the bans against living there. In 2002, 4 466 Chagossians in the UK, Mauritius and Seychelles sued for compensation. Moneyweb reports that the case was dismissed and the appeal was refused in 2004. The US-led wars in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 raised the strategic importance of Diego Garcia, which supported numerous airstrikes. A UK court and the European Court of Human Rights rejected the Chagossians’ appeals. In June 2017, the UN General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice to advise on the legality of separating Chagos from Mauritius. The AU and many of its member states supported the process. The assembly adopted the court’s advisory opinion and demanded unconditional withdrawal of the UK from the Chagos archipelago. However, in 2022, it announced its decision to resume negotiation with Mauritius over Chagos. This eventually led to the joint statement handing over the Chagos islands to Mauritius.
The issue also has major ramifications for South Africa, which has important military facilities – the Waterkloof airbase near Pretoria and the Simon’s Town naval base near Cape Town – that Russia and China would like to use for their own purposes. In a PoliticsWeb analysis, Anthea Jeffery notes that if the UK fails to stand up to these autocracies on a vital naval base, South Africa’s appetite to resist their use of its facilities is likely to shrink further. ‘China’s long-term objective in the Indian Ocean is to gain control over a large number of “pearls” – naval bases, civilian ports, islands and other strongholds – and then ‘string’ them together via the maritime routes developed and held open by its expanding blue-water navy, already the largest in the world. (China rejects the “string of pearls” concept, calling it “malicious defamation”.) China has nevertheless made major progress in creating many “pearls”. It has established a major naval base – the People’s Liberation Army Support Base – in Djibouti, next to the Bab-Al-Mandeb Strait that controls access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It has built a Chinese-controlled deep-water port near the mouth of the Persian Gulf at Gwadar in Pakistan, which could in time be used for military purposes.
