Power by colonial ways
How America acquired a site that would help reinforce its military presence
Once in a long while comes a book that is truly troubling. David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at the American University in Washington DC, has written about the plight of the Chagosian people who inhabited a series of islands in the Indian Ocean — collectively known as the Chagos — and who became famous after the British government evicted them to allow for the construction of a United States military base on Diego Garcia. Naturally, there is a good deal more in his study, including the uneasy topic of imperialism, with added commentary on the wisdom of a torch passing from one (Britain) to another (the US).
What happened to the small original population is astounding. Every inhabitant on Diego Garcia was forcibly relocated, which is the polite term to designate involuntary expulsion, to the Seychelles and Mauritius. A strategically located atoll with a natural harbour and enough room for a large airstrip, the island had the added advantage of having a "negligible" (page 181) number of residents, though few were asked their opinion concerning the move. Though a British-controlled territory, London bartered the facility to Washington, which satisfied the latter's need for "exclusive control". The people of Diego Garcia decided the US chief of naval operations, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, "absolutely must go" (page 111).
If the collusion between London and Washington materialised in the early 1970s, the Chagosians' fate was probably determined in the 1950s, when Stu Barber, then a bright, young — and naïve — American naval analyst, dreamt up what would become known as the Strategic Island Concept (SIC).
Planning for the long term
Barber understood that in the era of decolonisation, it would become difficult to maintain US land bases, where popular discontent could mobilise masses against such facilities. Instead, he and several colleagues designed a scheme of isolated islands, located "within striking distance of potential conflict zones", to enable easy access to potential hotspots. Diego Garcia would suit that objective in both Asia and the Arabian peninsula. A key requirement for the SIC was to identify islands with few inhabitants, with several Pacific islands — Bikini and Kwajalein atolls were among those used to test atomic weapons — cleansed of human beings.
Ironically, the Chagosians were expelled though the US military relied on Asian manpower to service its mushrooming facilities and Vine wonders why couldn't Chagosians be employed for these same tasks when most were willing candidates?
He painstakingly describes how raw imperialism, military prerogatives and racism were combined to deny the Chagosians a home, simply because their removal was relatively easy. The author does not mince words as he rains contempt on British and American officials even if his largely scholarly tome sometimes indulges in the self-conscious idiom of academic ethnography.
Vine reveals, for example, how these deportations occurred without offering compensation for the loss of livelihood or property. In the event, London granted an insufficient amount to Mauritius, ostensibly to house and care for the resettled refugees, but conditions in Port Louis went from bad to worse for every Chagosian. Pervasive institutional racism, poverty and health problems on Mauritius led to deaths because of destitution and Sagren (pages 149-163), chagrin that is movingly expressed through songs and poems quoted in the text and which literally humanise their predicament.
As one of the most important and secretive US military installations outside the US, Diego Garcia allows Washington to dominate the military scene. But alongside Vine's anthropological study of its hapless inhabitants, the reader is treated to a first-rate account of the anthropology of American bureaucratic debates (pages 112-125). Empires are messy affairs and their workings nearly impossible to fathom. Under Vine's pen, the patient reader will penetrate the mindsets of what may be labelled as perpetrators of tragedy, as he exposes an attitude that is troubling and pointless. For those who argue that the base proved to be vital in several conflicts, its distance and isolation were problematic, especially when many American allies offered similar facilities at lesser costs. The war for Iraq, for example, was successfully mounted from Saudi Arabia. And even if one acknowledged the facility's usefulness, why were the islanders exiled from their homes when they never opposed the base?
Vine answers this and many other questions by focusing on the issue of the human cost to secure this asset, correctly labelling it an "injustice", which besmirches those who champion human rights even if their agendas are not commendable.
Dr Joseph A. Kéchichian is an author, most recently of Faysal: Saudi Arabia's King for All Seasons, Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2008.
Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia By David Vine, Princeton University Press, 259 pages, $29.95
