Chagos Deal Critic: Mauritius Cannot Lease Away Sovereignty

Bashir Khan, the UK representative for the Chagos Refugees Group, has given a wide-ranging interview to Mauritius Times in which he delivers a blunt verdict on the ongoing UK-Mauritius agreement over the Chagos Islands: a nation cannot lease out its sovereign territory for a hundred years and still credibly claim to hold sovereignty over it.

The Chagos Islands, officially known as the British Indian Ocean Territory, sit at the centre of one of the most complex territorial disputes in the world. Mauritius has long asserted that the islands were illegally excised from its territory by Britain in 1965, before Mauritius gained independence. The International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion in 2019 stating that the UK's administration of the islands was unlawful, and the United Nations backed that position. The islands are home to Diego Garcia, a major joint US-UK military base considered strategically vital in the Indian Ocean.

Negotiations between London and Port Louis have been underway for several years, with a framework agreement announced in 2024. Critics, including Khan, argue that the terms being discussed would hand Mauritius nominal sovereignty while allowing the Diego Garcia base to continue operating under British and American control for decades, effectively neutering any real exercise of sovereign rights.

Khan argues that Mauritius is approaching the negotiation from a position of unnecessary weakness. Rather than relying solely on a bilateral relationship with the UK, he says Port Louis should deploy what he calls an India-China geopolitical counterweight. In practical terms, this means signalling to London and Washington that Mauritius has options, including deepening strategic partnerships with other major powers that have significant interests in Indian Ocean stability. The goal, he says, is to shift Mauritius from a weak bilateral negotiator into a strategic gatekeeper of a critical ocean corridor.

On the future of the Diego Garcia base itself, Khan points to studies funded by the US Department of Defense that he says demonstrate the installation will become operationally unviable far sooner than most observers expect. He does not specify a timeline in the published excerpt, but the implication is that Mauritius may be conceding long-term leverage in exchange for an arrangement that will lose its military value before the lease even expires.

The Chagos Refugees Group represents the Chagossian community, the people who were forcibly removed from the islands between 1968 and 1973 to make way for the military base. Their right of return, compensation and resettlement remain deeply contested issues that any final agreement must address. Khan's intervention reflects the community's concern that a deal struck between governments in London and Port Louis may again sideline the people whose lives were most directly affected.

What this means: For Mauritius, the stakes in the Chagos negotiations are not just symbolic. A poorly structured agreement could lock the country into a legal and political arrangement that limits its freedom of action in its own claimed waters for a generation, while delivering limited economic or security benefits to ordinary Mauritians or to the displaced Chagossian community. Khan's call for a bolder negotiating strategy reflects a broader debate about whether the current government is securing the best possible terms or accepting a compromise that flatters optics without delivering substance.

Source: Mauritius Times