Agalega’s Dilemma: A Strategic Alliance or Another Diego Garcia?
A military base created in the Indian Ocean by the occupying nation, allowing another ‘friendly’ nation to control and exert power over the base. Sounds familiar? No, this isn’t the island of Diego Garcia. And interestingly, this time, neither Britain nor the USA are involved in this. Instead, it is the nation that demanded and successfully obtained the Chagos Islands, Mauritius, making this agreement with India. This dates back to 2015, when an agreement was signed between the two nations, where, to our knowledge, it has allowed for a 3000m long runway and large jetty on Agalega as a product of their cooperation on maritime security. After all, this is beneficial to Indian Ocean trade routes since Mauritius occupies a large Exclusive Economic Zone of 1.2 million km2, and India occupies a larger one of 2.3 million km2. Yet, there is growing speculation that there is a confidential military base or a spy station on the pristine islands with a land area of 70 square km and just 3000 km away from India at their nearest points. This has inevitably been derided by the Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth as an “India-bashing campaign”, and he denies that there is no such project to transform Agalega into a military base. Instead, for Port Louis, this partnership is intended to target drug trafficking, human smuggling, illegal fishing, and emergency response. However, this denial hasn’t stopped some on the island of 300-350 people from leaving in light of the increasing militarisation of their home island, where many follow an ancestral livelihood of fishing and cultivating coconuts while India attempts to exert its supraregional influence on the western half of the Indian Ocean.
In a finding published by the BBC, it appears that the aforementioned runway is in use, where a P-8I has been photographed, evidence of some form of military cooperation. To give some background to this aircraft, the P-8I is a modified Boeing 737 to hunt and attack submarines as well as track maritime communications. This is evidence of an evolution in their close defence relationship, where India is taking the next step to counteract any Chinese bases that may crop up in this area from the “String of Pearls” - a series of investments from the Belt and Road Initiative into maritime infrastructure into nations like the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Tanzania. This evolution is based on the rising importance of the Indian Ocean, which has been a neglected geopolitical area for some time, containing many important naval passages, like the Straits of Malacca and the Suez Canal, along with the fact that over 80% of the world’s oil trade passes through that very ocean.
The fundamental concern should be centred on the local population, who wish for their home to end up, unlike the Chagos Islands - a sensitive historical subject finally and hopefully resolved this year. The villagers of Agalega fear that their own home will become a restricted area for the Indian military, forcing them to relocate or even leave the island in the worst-case scenario. Moreover, these fears are not unfounded since the Mauritian government is the sole land-owner and employer on this island, and worsening problems have emerged in the healthcare, education and economy of this island. In addition, little to no people on Agalega have worked on the construction of this port, perhaps symbolic that the governments will make things miserable so that they leave of their own volition. Therefore, it remains to be seen whether the islanders will be forced to leave Agalega, which will bring its own bad optics that a foreign military base could yet again uproot natives from their home island.