I have just learned that the UK government’s offer to Mauritius for ceding the entire British Indian Ocean Territory is £800 million per year, plus ‘reparations’, as yet to be determined. Once we get into ‘reparations’ we know that we’re into the billions of pounds and this won’t start at under £2.0 billion. The £800 million a year is premised on a 99 year lease. My maths runs out on this but even I can see how much this will cost over the next 20 years and £16.0 billion looks like quite a lot of cash. Round this up with ‘reparations’ and you’re looking at £20.0 billion of unanticipated, unfunded, extra government expenditure, the bulk of which will hit before 2035.
As far as I can see, this money will all be paid to the government of Mauritius, which begs a few questions. Unusually, Mauritius looks like a half-way viable economy with a high GDP and a high per capita GDP. They haven’t gone for the PRC Belt and Road Initiative, but they have taken loans from PRC ‘Development Banks’ which are widely spread across Africa.
I’m staggered by the crass stupidity of this deal and the utter lack of interest in the fate of the Chagos Islanders who have been totally betrayed and ignored by HMG for some 60 years.
In order to secure a 99 year lease on one of the islands which is a British territory, and has been since 1815, or thereabouts, HMG has signed an agreement committing to coughing up £800 million a year to the government of Mauritius, which has never had any claim on the territory and hasn’t been very good at looking after the Chagos Islanders who were deported there in 1968.
A few facts:
- There are, probably, about 10,000 Chagos Islanders living in exile either in Mauritius, or Crawley, of all places.
- The group of atolls which comprise the British Indian Ocean Territory includes a number of other atolls, apart from Diego Garcia.
- As an independent nation, this new country would face many problems, although it would have, at least, two major assets:
- The revenues from the lease of Diego Garcia as a US/UK base.
- Large fisheries license fees potential from its very large Exclusive Economic Zone under the UNCLOS. It’s disputed, obviously, but would be somewhere around 0.75 – 1.0 million square miles, and possibly greater.
- 10,000 is a very small population for a country, and some form of protectorate might be a good idea over the next 30-50 years. However, this could be put together with partner nations, and I doubt whether it would cost HMG more than 10% of the £800 million a year being offered today to palm off the whole territory to Mauritius.
As things are now shaping, and the recent rejection of the UK government offer by the new government in Mauritius, we need to look across the Atlantic, again, and see how this is going to be viewed after January 20th.
Trump isn’t best known for his interest in far-away places. This doesn’t mean that he’s not a supporter of the US military and its perceived need to remain well-equipped and deployed in strategic sites around the world. It’s not straightforward, and nothing can be taken for granted in the foreign policies of the new administration, although there are a few obvious indicators.
The possible outbreak of war between Pakistan and Afghanistan on top of everything else going on in the Middle East, forever, lends support for keeping the US installation on Diego Garcia.
My guess, for what little it’s worth, is that a briefing to Trump on Diego Garcia which includes reference to the ties which Mauritius has committed to with the PRC will have some impact. PRC holds some sway in Port Louis, not least because of large loans extended.
Mauritius features in the PRC’s plans for the Indian Ocean and the PRC’s large ports projects in Sri Lanka and plans in East Africa are a major factor. The Port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka is always worth inspection. It’s arguable that the politics of Mauritius under the new PM may not be as pro-PRC as the outgoing Militant Socialist Movement’s last Prime Minister. It may be a moot point in a country which seems to have a very smart policy on taxation for foreign registered companies, notably in the finance sector.
Handing this group of islands over to Mauritius isn’t, however, just a bad idea, it’s a very, very bad idea and one which risks serious harm to Western interests in geo-political and basic military strategic considerations. Diego Garcia is, in US military terms, a relatively low-cost highly strategic base which is a lot cheaper to maintain than an aircraft-carrier group in the Indian Ocean.
I’d like to see the UK Government cancel this appallingly useless transfer and give some serious and overdue consideration for the Chagosians who were sold out by another Labour government in 1967/68 and deported from their home. As far as I can see, after nearly 60 years they and their descendants are living as second-class citizens in Port Louis or parked in Crawley – God knows why Crawley, but I’d guess that it suited a few families, and the rest came to join them. I’ve seen similar coalescing of expatriated peoples from other countries.
There are many ways that the Chagos Islanders could be allowed to return to their home islands and good examples for cohabitation with the US military on Diego Garcia could be learned from the Marshall Islands, Kwajalein and Ebeye, where local people live on the same atoll as the US military base. This has worked reasonably well for the last 70 years or so to my certain knowledge and, I’d guess that a rational proposal along similar lines to the US might be well received. Chagos Islanders could be offered training and jobs on the US base and the US could fund schools and colleges, as they do in the Marshall Islands.
The chances of such a proposal from our Foreign Secretary are somewhere between zero and nil. They have maps and, probably, a globe in the FCOD offices in King Charles’ Street. Whether Mr Lammy ever wonders what they’re there for is open to speculation. I have a vision from the ‘Inspector Clouseau’ film of our Secretary of State, resting his hand on the globe and trapping his fingers……
In addition to this, there are other atolls in the Chagos Archipelago which could be settled by Chagos Islanders using the many models offered in Micronesia, Polynesia and Melanesia. Small island states can work as useful self-governing nations with reasonable levels of assistance, as a brief look around the 14 Pacific Island Countries, PICs, will demonstrate. I don’t know what the actual levels of assistance per year are for the 14 PICs but I’d be surprised if it greatly exceeded £800 million per year for all of them. I’d be happy to stand corrected on this.
Any of these models would cost a small fraction of the £800 million a year which HMG is bent on handing over to Mauritius, plus undefined amounts for ‘reparations. I can’t imagine how our two successive governments have come up with this and wonder what they thought they were doing. Given the fact that the splendidly named, James Cleverly and Lord Cameron of Chipping Grifters were, allegedly, responsible for initiating this appalling act of consummate and cynical betrayal merely adds to the number of reasons why this should be contested.
I don’t have the political contacts, skills, or resources to promote a campaign to help in preventing the Chagos Islanders being sold down the river for a second time in 60 years.
Maybe some of the commenters here on FSB might be able to offer guidance on this. The odd letter to the Daily Telegraph might not be adequate, although one wonders why The Guardian appears to have ignored the plight of the Chagos Islanders? Somehow, the Chagos Islanders have never been included in the long list of aggrieved and deprived peoples around the world on The Guardian’s long list of deserving causes. I cannot think why this is the case.
The interests of the Chagos Islanders have barely registered in the UK since they were all rounded up and deported in 1968 to make way for the new US Air Force base on Diego Garcia. The Banabans of Ocean Island have enjoyed a similar lack of UK interest since HMG sequestered their island after the Second World War and handed it over for mining to the British Phosphate Commission and relocated them to another island in the Fiji group. The Banabans fought a civil court case in UK for 14 years which was a record in British legal history. They won, and were awarded a derisory settlement. They didn’t get their home island back.
I hesitate to compare the treatment of the Chagos Islanders and the Banabans of Ocean Island to the Falkland Islanders, but I can see a striking difference in HMG’s approach to looking after their particular and distinct best interests and it would be impossible to deny this.
I apologise if this comparison offends anybody who lost a relative or friend in the Falklands campaign. It’s not my intention to cast any aspersions on the rightness of this campaign, much less the valour of our servicemen who fought in that campaign. I cannot, however, refrain from observing the marked differences which are so striking when I look at these three examples.
As an aside: I might add that I got into a row with a group of Irish artists who started to celebrate the news over the radio that HMS Sheffield had been sunk. This was in a bar in Paris, near Porte Versailles, on May 4th, 1982. I’d been taken there by an Irish colleague who was ‘courting’ a lady in this colony of Irish artists – it spiced things up with his wife in Dublin and his mistress in Paris. The news came over the bar and one of these eejits stood on a table and shouted the news to the rest of the bar in English and French. ‘They’ve sunk a British battleship!’
It was interesting to see half a dozen Irish, young, people get very excited about this.
The French men in the bar expressed no obvious feelings apart from antipathy towards the eejits who were celebrating. I went over to the ‘Head eejit’ and told him that he wasn’t doing himself any favours by celebrating the deaths of so many people, which I said in French.
This confused him but got a murmur of approving grunts from the others in the bar.
It was strange time for an Englishman to be working in France. I’d have to say that the largest number of the people I met in the agricultural sector in West France during those weeks were 100% pro-British Task Force and it wasn’t a subject which I ever brought up. They all wanted to know what I knew about this and wanted me to know that they thought that Mrs Thatcher had the right idea. Funny lot the French.
Back to the subject: For a variety of obvious reasons I’d guess that the Chagos Islanders’ interests will remain largely ignored for another 60 years. They don’t fit in with any popular narrative of being oppressed, or oppressive, for religious, ethnic, or particular sexual persuasions, and you could fit the entire population into one stand in a Premier League Football ground. Who cares?
I’m probably being sentimental about this. I know something of tiny coral atoll nations in the Pacific and got quite fond of quite a few of them over the last 50 years. I’m related by marriage to one tiny island country which has a population of 11,400 spread over nine islands.
I had a couple of contracts working in the Maldives as well which didn’t put me off, in spite of the fact that they’re very Muslim and different in so many ways in their outer island villages.
All coral atolls look the same from an aircraft – classic white beaches with turquoise waters and lots of coconut palms. On the ground, the mosquitoes and other insects combine with 35C and high humidity to make life less idyllic.
Regardless of my predisposition towards the Chagos Islanders, I’m convinced that this small group of people who have been, one way or another, under the protection of His Majesty’s Government for a couple of hundred years, are about to suffer another grave injustice.
The possible remedies are not too difficult to implement. It does require a bit of imagination combined with some experience and some determined hard work. These appear to be totally off the list as far as HMG is concerned and they’d rather spend tens of billions of taxpayers’ cash committed over the next 99 years rather than find a sensible, useful, and just solution to the problem.
This should not go unchallenged. I’m afraid that I don’t know how to offer any challenge.
