What may seem like the end of the last vestige of Western colonialism in the Indian Ocean region could well turn out to be the beginning of increased tension between the United States, India — and China.
Last October, the United Kingdom and Mauritius reached an agreement that the British Indian Ocean Territory would be returned to Mauritius, to which it once belonged.
A month later, the newly-elected Mauritius government under Navin Ramgoolam ordered a review of the agreement, which he described as a “sellout” because it did not benefit his nation enough in terms of compensation for years of colonial rule and the forced expulsion of the archipelago’s original inhabitants.
That occurred when the Chagos Archipelago’s seven atolls separated from Mauritius in 1965, and the largest of them, Diego Garcia, was leased to the United States to house a major, highly secretive military base in the Indian Ocean.
But the handover is bound to happen, and there is already talk about turning the sun-drenched archipelago into a tourist paradise akin to its closest island neighbor, the Maldives, situated some 500 kilometers away.
Exclusive luxury resorts could conceivably be built, attracting high-spending visitors from all over the world. Diving, surfing and so-called “eco-friendly” activities are already being touted on lifestyle websites referring to the Chagos Archipelago as a “new Maldives.”
But therein lies the geostrategic problem. Britain has pledged to provide Mauritius with financial support to develop the islands, including a partnership to build badly needed infrastructure.
However, Mauritius is a sovereign country and it is hard to imagine that China will not seek to finance its own projects on the archipelago – and not just because Beijing is interested in helping to turn the islands into an attractive destination for globetrotting Chinese tourists.
That is exactly what has happened in the Maldives, where Chinese visitors top tourism arrival lists. China has invested heavily in infrastructure development, including a bridge connecting the islands of Hulhule and Hulhumale with the capital, Male. That building has bought political influence, raising concern with the Maldives’ traditional development partner and strategic ally India.
The Maldives is strategically important to China because it lies along the sea routes through which its imported oil from the Persian Gulf travels.
If China were to gain a strategic foothold in the Chagos Archipelago through seemingly innocent investment projects, it would give China a key vantage point to monitor US military activities at Diego Garcia.
In case of a future conflict, including possible military confrontation between the United States and China, Diego Garcia would play a crucial role in America’s defense of its interests in the Indian Ocean and beyond.
China, on the other hand, is rapidly expanding its political and economic, and therefore also strategic, influence in the Indian Ocean at the expense of the United States and India. And that is why alarm bells are ringing in Washington.
After the deal’s announcement in October, Republican US senators criticized the British government for ceding control of the Chagos Archipelago, warning that the move would be “a coup for Chinese interests.”
Among them was Idaho Senator James Risch, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Texas representative Michael McCaul, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. With Republican Donald Trump headed for the White House, such concerns may gain louder resonance among the many known China hawks in his Cabinet.
According to the tentative Britain-Mauritius agreement, the United States will retain control of Diego Garcia for 99 years after the handover.
However, certain parallels are already being drawn with Britain’s 1997 handover agreement with China on Hong Kong, where Beijing pledged to uphold the principle of “one country, two systems” for 50 years and then broke the deal by imposing its authoritarian rule on the once freewheeling British colony.
To be sure, Mauritius is not China. More than half of the island republic’s population are descendants of indentured laborers brought from India by the British during the colonial era to work on sugar plantations, so naturally, relations with India have always been close.
Fast forward to the present, China’s influence is growing in the Indian Ocean and Beijing clearly sees Mauritius as a gateway to Africa, where China’s interests are growing via its Belt and Road Initiative and assorted natural resource extraction deals.
Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Mauritius in 2018. At a grand ceremony held in Xi’s honor, the Chinese leader said that he looked forward to exchanging views with Mauritius “on bilateral relations and on international and regional issues of mutual concern.”
A year later, Mauritius became the first African country to enter into a free trade agreement with China, which came into force in January 2021 and has since weighed heavily in China’s favor.
According to the United Nations COMTRADE database on international trade, Mauritius’ imports from China totaled US$993 million in 2023, while its exports to China, despite annual increases, amounted to a mere $26.32 million. China has also invested liberally in Mauritian finance, real estate, manufacturing and tourism.
That all means Mauritius is drawing closer to China, allowing it to diversify diplomatically and commercially from its long-time partner India.
The Chagos Archipelago has long been sought after by outside powers. It was uninhabited when Maldivian and European seafarers visited the islands more than 500 years ago. The French established coconut plantations on the larger islands and brought in slaves from its possessions in the region.
The British took over the archipelago in 1815, governing it from Mauritius which was then also a British colony. Slavery was abolished by the British in 1840, but the coconut plantations remained. Nothing remarkable happened there until 1965 when Britain purchased the archipelago from the then-self-governing colony of Mauritius.
Three years later, Mauritius was granted full independence from Britain, but with a major caveat: The British insisted that Mauritius would not become independent unless it agreed to separate the Chagos Archipelago from its domains. It thus became known as the “British Indian Ocean Territory”, and it soon became clear why London insisted on the separation.
Britain and the United States had agreed to turn the archipelago’s main island of Diego Garcia into a formidable military base whereby Britain would remain the colonial power and the United States would lease the land. At the same time, the entire population of the archipelago, then consisting of some 1,000 people, was forcibly evicted and sent to Mauritius and the Seychelles.
Diego Garcia’s strategic location was obvious. In the event of war or another emergency, it offers the US and UK access to East Africa, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and oversees vital shipping lines across the Indian Ocean.
Diego Garcia’s creation was also in line in the time with a new US policy known as the “Strategic Islands Concept”, where military bases were to be built away from populous mainland areas where they could be exposed to anti-Western and anti-American opposition.
Diego Garcia played an important role as a logistics base in both Gulf Wars in 1990-91 and 2003 and was also used to support US-led combat operations in Afghanistan. More controversially, terrorist suspects who had been captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere were sent to Diego Garcia where they were subjected far from prying eyes to so-called “extraordinary rendition.”
The original inhabitants of the archipelago, known as the Chagossians, have for years fought for the right to return home. Those demands were rejected repeatedly by the British government.
However, in 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory stating that the entire British Indian Ocean Territory should be handed back to Mauritius. The Chagossians, now in second and third generations since their removal from the islands, are reputedly over 10,000 in number.
But the main issue is how Mauritius will govern the archipelago once it becomes part of its republic and how it will balance relations with China, the United States and other Indian Ocean powers. It is not only Washington that is worried about Chinese expansion into the strategic and increasingly hotly contested maritime region.
India, which is struggling to maintain good relations with occasionally hostile Maldives and increasingly unpredictable Mauritius, has always considered the Indian Ocean “its lake.”
With the departure of the British from their last possession “east of Suez”—as the saying goes—anything can happen. But it would be naive to believe that China, with its rising geostrategic interests in the Indian Ocean, will not seek to play an outsized role in shaping the Chagos Archipelago’s future.
Bertil Lintner is a Thailand-based journalist, author and security analyst. His most recent book is “The Golden Land Ablaze: Coups, Insurgents and the State in Myanmar”, which can be purchased on Amazon here.
