by Geoff Vasil

I always used to ask myself that every time i heard Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on television.

Back in the 1980s Brøderbund Software released a game by the same name which became extremely popular with school children. It went on to become a children’s game show on the Public Broadcasting System network in the United States. Later the newcomer network Fox picked it up as well.

The games and series are essentially a mystery where clues are given to the current location of the arch-villain Carmen Sandiego, head of the international association of bad guys called V.I.L.E., shades of SPECTRE, HYDRA and KAOS.

I never played or watched, but the title became associated in my mind with the somewhat secret Anglo-American base on the mysterious island Deigo Garcia.

The New York Times and the Christian Science Monitor among others mentioned the supposedly secret base in the 1980s, and espeically during the First Gulf War in 1991. If it was secret, the cat was out of the bag at that point.

So where was it? It was positioned in a strategic location able to reach Irag and the Persian Gulf quickly. Diego Garcia trurned out to be one island in the mysterious Chagos group.

Chagos was the definition of uncharted islands. There was no aboriginal population probably because it is just so remote in the middle more or less of the Indian Ocean. Natives had to be imported from neighboring regions initially. No real archaeology has been conducted, but the empty islands eventually taken over by the British Empire have probably seen visitors over the millennia. It’s amusing to speculate about who they might have been. The most obvious suspects are Malays during one of their many expansions into what is now known as the micro-continent of Madagascar. The older name of the gigantic island off southeast Africa gives it away: Malagasy. Another people of interest would be the Vedic Hindus whose dominion once extended into now lost and submerged kingdoms off the southern coast and Ceylon/Sri Lanka, some of whose cities have been discovered, apparently, under water.

The imported laborers, now called Chagosians, might have had time to generate a generation or two, but were entirely removed during the Cold War to former French colony now independent nation Mauritius. Some of them have been suing the British Crown for the right to return and reparations for decades now.

In the last week Deigo Garcia has again entered the world news as the location of B2 stealth bombers able to hit Iran’s underground nuclear facilities with bunker-buster bombs. Birtish news, however, has been talking for months about the Chagos, because Keir Starmer cut a deal to give up the British Indian Ocean territory to Mauritius, and to pay them £11 billion for their trouble over the next decade or so. Starmer won’t say what the money’s for, but speculation is it’s for relocating Chagosians in Mauritius back to the Chagos and to pay for what is being called in Britian the American base on Diego Garcia.

Why would the UK want to give up territory and pay a third uninvolved party to take over?

The problem seems to be Anglo-American guilt, in the same vein that handed nack Hong Kong and the Panama Canal. Except there aren’t a native people to whom the land should be returned. It’s akin to the massive miscalculation by Margaret Thatcher’s foreign minister to seek black rule in Rhodesia at any cost. Apparently they thought this would herald the beginning of black majority rule in South Africa, which it didn’t. All it did was install Zanu and PF Communist forces positioned in countries to the north of Rhodesia to continue their military invasion and take over for life under Communist one-party rule. For whatever reason, in the name of renouncing colonial outposts, Thatcher and Jimmy Carter gave away the family jewels, but Thatcher maintained British control of the Falkland Islands, of the penguins, sheep and heaths blasted by the Antarctic polar currents.

Diego Garcia represents a sort of super-collonial outpost, like America’s Thule in northern Greenland. Mauritius has no historical or real claim to the island group. Britain only has nominal sovereignty and the only business in town is the American super-airbase there. Chagosians are only scheduled to return to the other islands besides Diego Garcia under Starrmer’s current plan. There’s no reason they can’t return anyway to those islands under the flag of the United States instead of that of Mauritius or the United Kingdom. I’d guess a majority would rather be an American territory than second-class citizens under Mauritius.

The funny thing is, the British Government is seeking legal advice on whether the strikes by the United States on Iran in support of Israel are legal. In other words, is it legal for the UK to allow the US to use the US base at Diego Garcia which the British are leasing for the Americans from Mauritius for 11 billion. In ither words, is there a legal argument to deny the US use of its own base in order to thwart Israel? Never mind the self-determination of the Chagosians, this is some wild self-determination by British technocrats and evinces a very complicated “special relationship.” Some might even call it anti-Semitism.

The opinons expressed here are purely those of the author and don’t represent any specific organization or anyone else.