Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia (46 page)

Elsewhere in the Pacific after World War II, the United States won basing rights and other colonial rights when the UN granted it trusteeship over the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, previously “mandated” to Japan after World War I. In the Marshall Islands, the United States conducted its nuclear testing in the Bikinis and retained an important missile testing facility in the Kwajalein Atoll after the islands gained formal independence in 1986 but entered into a protectorate-like “compact of free association” with the United States. Sandars,
America’s Overseas Garrisons
, 36.

Other overseas bases exist largely because of relationships between former European powers and their colonies. Bases acquired through lend-lease are a prime example, where the U.S. Government negotiated continued occupation deals after World War II with the help of the still-ruling British. The same is true for postwar French bases in Morocco. In Panama and the Philippines, the United States has benefited from its own neocolonial relationships to maintain important bases near the Panama Canal and in East Asia. The maintenance of U.S. bases in these nations often represents a continuation of colonial relationships in a different form. See Sandars,
America’s Overseas Garrisons
, 13.

32
. Ho, “Empire through Diasporic Eyes,” 232, 238–39. On the privatization of the military, see, e.g., Clifford Rosky, “Force, Inc.: The Privatization of Punishment, Policing, and Military Force in Liberal States,”
Connecticut Law Review
36 (2004): 879–1032.

33
. Ho, “Empire through Diasporic Eyes,” 230.

34
. C. Johnson,
Nemesis
, 171–207. Precedent for this kind of “extraterritoriality” goes back at least to the 1839–1842 Opium War in China. See Ho, “Empire through Diasporic Eyes,” 232.

35
. Ibid., 230.

36
. My thanks to Hugh Gusterson and others for stressing this point.

37
. U.S. Congress, House, “Diego Garcia, 1975,” 46.

38
. The issue of who is a Chagossian should be left to those who self-identify as Chagossians. I would suggest, however, that many long-term Chagos residents who happened, for various reasons, not to have been born in Chagos, but who in some cases were the descendants of people born in Chagos, should be considered eligible for compensation of some kind.

39
. Lincoln P. Bloomfield, Jr., letter to Robert N. Culshaw, April 29, 2004.

40
. E.g., Gerson, “The Sun Never Sets”; Cynthia Enloe,
Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics
(Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1990); “Bananas, Bases, and Patriarchy,” in
Women, Militarism, and War: Essays in History, Politics, and Social Theory
, ed. Jean B. Elshtain and Sheila Tobias (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), 189–206;
The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993); Lutz,
Homefront
; Sandars,
America’s Overseas Garrisons
; Baker,
American Soldiers Overseas
; Gillem,
American Town
.

1
. Barber, unpublished letter to the editor of the
Washington Post
, March 9, 1991.

2
. Madeley, “Diego Garcia.”

3
. Stuart B. Barber, letter to Aryeh Neier [executive director, Human Rights Watch], February 23, 1993.

4
. Barber, letter to Senator Ted Stevens, October 3, 1975.

5
. Richard Barber, email, February 24, 2008.

AFTERWORD TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION

As I write this, one year after the original publication of
Island of Shame
, the Chagossians are still living in exile, barred from returning to Chagos. They have received no additional compensation for their expulsion. The U.S. and British governments have, so far, continued to shun all responsibility for the Chagossians.

Just as the hardback version of this book was going to press, the Law Lords in the House of Lords announced their ruling in the British government’s final appeal of the Chagossians’ case challenging the legality of their exile. By a three-to-two verdict, the Lords ruled in favor of the government. The ruling effectively overturned the Chagossians’ three lower-court victories (2000, 2006, and 2007) and the seven judges who had previously ruled unanimously in their favor. In the process, the majority upheld colonial law—and the right of the executive to make law for and decide the fate of a colonized people—finding that the military and financial interests of the government trumped the Chagossians’ right of abode in their homeland. As the lawyer Michael Tigar said of the British government one night after court, “Why do they get to make the choices? You’re a subject people. That’s why.”
¹
So close to winning the right of return and a final victory in the British litigation, the ruling was an enormous disappointment for the Chagossians and their supporters.

Despite—and in some ways, because of—the legal reversal, momentum has been building around the world for the Chagossians’ struggle as more supporters rally behind their cause. Even before the ruling, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee issued a rebuke to the government’s position, concluding that “[there] is a strong moral case for the UK permitting and supporting a return.”
²
Following the ruling, more than forty members of Parliament and other politicians formed an all-party group that has been supporting the Chagossians’ struggle and trying to initiate negotiations with the government. In March 2009, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the European Union to support a return. And in the United States, in October 2009, Olivier Bancoult visited Washington, DC, to start a new campaign to pressure the Obama administration to acknowledge U.S. responsibility for the exile and ensure the right of return and proper compensation. During his visit, Olivier met with four members of the Congressional Black Caucus, which appeared particularly interested in supporting the struggle. That same month, in an
open letter to President Obama published in
Le Monde
, 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio asked his fellow Nobel laureate “to allow these people and their children to return to live in their homeland, to work there . . . to honor their ancestors there.” Le Clézio wrote, “It would not be an act of charity, but of justice.”
³

Now, the Chagossians and their lawyers are awaiting a ruling on their case from the European Court of Human Rights, which will serve as an appeal to the House of Lords’ decision. A decision is expected by the time this paperback edition goes to press (see
www.chagossupport.org.uk
for updates).

Troublingly, however, the British government appears to have taken steps to preempt the European Court. On April 1, 2010, the then ruling Labour government announced the creation of the world’s largest Marine Protection Area (MPA) in the Chagos Archipelago. Although the details of the MPA have not been finalized, it would likely include a ban on commercial fishing and other limitations on human activity, endangering any resettlement efforts. Indeed, many believe the MPA could cement forever the Chagossians’ exile no matter the European court’s ruling. In a letter to Greenpeace UK (which, along with the Pew Charitable Trusts, backed the MPA), Mauritian activist Ram Seegobin wrote, “Clearly, the British government is preparing a fall-back plan; if they lose the case in Europe, then there will be another ‘reason’ for denying the banished people their right of return.”
⁴

British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights advocacy organization Reprieve, was even more direct: “The truth is that no Chagossian has anything like equal rights with even the warty sea slug.”
⁵
The Chagossians and their lawyers are currently pursuing a legal challenge to the MPA.

While the British government plans an environmental protection area in Chagos, the base on Diego Garcia has only continued to expand. Most recently, in early 2010, the base received a shipment of depleted-uranium-tipped “bunker buster” bombs, posing an implicit threat to Iran.
⁶
Meanwhile, more evidence has appeared documenting the use of Diego Garcia as a secret prison facility for accused terrorist suspects. Articles in
Time
and the
Guardian
, citing interviews with intelligence officials, indicated that as many as ten detainees were held on or around the island from 2002 until as late as 2006.
⁷
In 2008, investigators with Reprieve identified Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi as one of the two detainees confirmed by U.S. and British officials to have been transited through the island. This would implicate Diego Garcia in the torture that produced Libi’s false statements linking
Iraq and al Qaeda, which ended up as the centerpiece of Colin Powell’s infamous 2003 UN speech and the Bush administration’s argument for invading Iraq.
⁸
Meanwhile, Reprieve and Britain’s Liberal Democrats have found evidence that the British government systematically destroyed flight logs for Diego Garcia, possibly covering up more proof of the island’s role in the rendition and secret detention programs.
⁹
Both the Obama administration and the British government have continued to deny journalists and international observers access to the island to establish whether prisoners are still being held on or around Diego Garcia (interestingly, it remains far easier to visit the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—where I recently took a research trip—than Diego Garcia).

In the wake of the Labour party’s defeat in the spring 2010 elections, there was reason to be optimistic about a reversal of British policy on Chagos and the Chagossians. New Conservative Party Foreign Secretary William Hague was on record as saying before the election, “I can assure you that if elected . . . we will work to ensure a fair settlement of this long standing dispute.” Elsewhere he said, “this was clearly a moral issue and the rights of the Chagossian people should be recognized.” Similarly, the office of Liberal Democrat leader and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg wrote prior to the election, “the Government has a moral responsibility to allow those people to at last return.”
¹⁰
Three months after taking office, however, the new government reversed such promises, saying that it would continue the case before the European Court, reject further compensation claims, and support the MPA.
¹¹

Meanwhile, the Obama administration has remained even more unresponsive to the Chagossians despite the best efforts of the Chagos Refugees Group and others to begin a dialogue. When I have had the opportunity to speak about
Island of Shame
over the past year, many have asked how the new administration and the Pentagon have responded to the book. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the response has been silence. (In addition to quixotically sending a copy to President Obama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, friends have been able to pass the book to high-ranking officials in the Pentagon and the National Security Council.) The closest thing to a government response came in the form of a letter to the editor of the
New York Review of Books
, which published a positive review of the book in May 2009.
¹²
Retired U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Thomas McC. Chesney wrote:

The “Cold War” with communism was won by the ability of America to project strength around the world. Critical to that effort were the SSBNs, nuclear-powered strategic submarines. In order to avoid
detection by the Soviets, these boats usually stayed underwater, but they had occasionally to come to the surface for replenishment, which they did in . . . Diego Garcia. . . . Secrecy was mandatory. If the war on terror is to be won it also will require American strength and fortitude and the ability to provide a continuous global presence and communications. This can’t be done from the Pentagon, Washington, or even New York. . . . Diego Garcia is, to quote the review, “a military base that has since become central to US control of the Indian Ocean and domination of the Persian Gulf.” . . . Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, CNO (Chief of Naval Operations) while I was on active duty, rightly championed Diego Garcia, knowing it would become a “defense facility of the highest importance.” For him (and his successors) not to have done so would have been totally irresponsible to the requirements of the American (and even British) people.
¹³

Jonathan Freedman, the reviewer for the
New York Review of Books
, responded with great eloquence:

Commander Chesney is to be thanked for his letter, which helpfully reveals precisely the mindset [
Island of Shame
] so methodically exposes . . . and which I sought to convey in my review. . . . The question is not whether Diego Garcia is of military value to the United States. The issue is the human cost that was paid to secure this asset for US use. That cost was met not by Americans, nor by Britons, but by islanders dispossessed without warning or compensation, their fate concealed in layer upon layer of officially sanctioned lies. . . . In its failure even so much as to mention the Chagossian people, Commander Chesney’s letter serves as further evidence of the blind spot in US military thinking that both [
Island of Shame
] and my essay sought to discuss.
¹⁴

I should point out that almost every other former member of the U.S. military or State Department who has spoken with me after the book’s publication has expressed their personal embarrassment over the history. The response from the broader public has been just as encouraging. Ordinary citizens and media outlets across the United States and from countries as far afield as Canada, Australia, South Africa, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Britain, Mauritius, and the Seychelles have shown great interest in the book and in supporting the Chagossians’ struggle.