Is the United States about to lose control of its secretive Diego Garcia military base? By Jenni Marsh
The secretive Diego
Garcia military base may be 1,000 miles from the nearest continent, but it has
all the trappings of a modern American town. The troops here can
dine on burgers at Jake's Place, enjoy a nine-hole golf course, go bowling or
sink a cold beer at one of several bars. The local command has nicknamed the
base the "Footprint of Freedom." But while cars here
drive on the right side of the road, this is not American soil: It is, in fact,
a remote remnant of the British Empire.
That is because in
1965, in the middle of the Cold War, the United States signed a controversial,
secret agreement with the British government to lease one of the 60 or so
Indian Ocean atolls that make up the Chagos Islands to construct a military
base. That deal was secret
because the UK was in the process of decolonizing Mauritius, of which the
Chagos archipelago was a dependency. The Chagos Islands
never got its independence day. Instead, it was cleaved from Mauritius and
renamed the British Indian Ocean Territory, a move that the United Nations'
highest court in 2019 ruled was illegal under international law. Britain has now been
instructed to properly finish the process of decolonization, and return the
Chagos Islands, located half way between Africa and Indonesia, to Mauritius.
The ruling, though
non-binding, potentially creates a huge problem for the United States. Today,
Diego Garcia is one of America's most important - and secretive - overseas
assets. Home to over 1,000 US
troops and staff, it has been used by the US Navy, the US Air Force and even
NASA - the island's enormous runway was a designated emergency landing site
for the space shuttle. Diego Garcia has helped to launch two invasions of Iraq,
served as a vital landing spot for bombers that fly missions across Asia, including
over the South China Sea, and has been linked to US rendition efforts... read more:
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