On March 21, 2026, Iran launched missiles at Diego Garcia — a 27-square-kilometer coral atoll in the central Indian Ocean, 1,000 miles south of India and 2,500 miles from the nearest point in Iran. The missiles did not hit the island. It is unclear how close they came. RUSI senior research fellow Justin Bronk suggested that Iran may have used a Simorgh space launch vehicle repurposed as a ballistic missile — a weapon with greater range than Iran’s declared 2,000-kilometer missile limit, but with reduced accuracy. Britain condemned “Iran’s reckless attacks.” Iran denied targeting Diego Garcia. The U.S. military, which operates the island as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia, and East Africa, did not provide details on the interception or trajectory. What was confirmed was that nuclear-capable B-2 Spirit bombers had been deployed to Diego Garcia the previous year to conduct strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels — the same strikes that the Battlefields of the Future course covers as part of the expanding conflict in the Red Sea corridor — and that Iran’s escalation reflected a widening of the geographic scope of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran into the Indian Ocean. A military analyst told Al Jazeera: “The battlefield is expanding geographically, and if that happens, the control of escalation becomes much more difficult because new locations are becoming vulnerable.” Diego Garcia was supposed to be invulnerable. It is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. There is nothing around it for a thousand miles. That was the point.
What Diego Garcia is
Diego Garcia is the largest island in the Chagos Archipelago — a chain of roughly 60 islands in the British Indian Ocean Territory, a colonial remnant that the United Kingdom created in 1965 by detaching the islands from Mauritius three years before Mauritian independence. The detachment was conducted specifically to facilitate the construction of a U.S. military base on Diego Garcia — a base that the Pentagon has used for strategic bomber operations, submarine communications, satellite surveillance, naval logistics, and — as the U.S. acknowledged in 2008 — clandestine CIA rendition flights of terrorism suspects. The island hosts approximately 2,500 mostly American military personnel, a 12,000-foot runway capable of handling B-52s and B-2s, pre-positioned naval equipment, a satellite tracking station, and — according to persistent but unconfirmed reports — a signals intelligence facility. The Shadowcraft course documents how state power operates through covert infrastructure. Diego Garcia is the physical infrastructure — a base whose existence is acknowledged but whose full operational scope is classified, on an island whose indigenous population was removed to make way for it.
The deportation
Between 1968 and 1973, the British government forcibly removed approximately 1,500 to 2,000 Chagossians — the indigenous population of Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands — from their homeland and deposited them in Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles away. The removal was conducted with deliberate cruelty: the British administrator ordered all pet dogs on Diego Garcia killed — gassed with engine exhaust from military vehicles — as a demonstration of what would happen if the islanders didn’t leave. The Chagossians received no compensation at the time of removal. They were given no right of return. They were told the move was temporary. It was not.
The deportation was conducted in secrecy and its details suppressed for decades. Internal British government documents — declassified in the 2000s — revealed that officials were aware the removal constituted a violation of the islanders’ rights. A 1966 memo from the British colonial office described the plan as “Maintaining the fiction that the inhabitants of the Chagos islands are not a permanent or semi-permanent population.” By defining the Chagossians as transient laborers rather than an indigenous people, the British government avoided obligations under international law that would have applied to the removal of a settled population. The fiction was maintained for thirty years.
The North Sentinel Island post documented a population protected from contact because the Indian government decided the island had no strategic value. Diego Garcia is the inverse: a population removed from its homeland because the American and British governments decided the island had immense strategic value. The Great Nicobar development project threatens the Shompen because India wants a military base near the Strait of Malacca. The Chagossians were deported because the Pentagon wanted a base in the Indian Ocean. The Ilemi Triangle’s pastoralists were ignored because the land had no value; when oil was discovered, the dispute intensified. The pattern is consistent: indigenous populations are protected, ignored, or removed based on the strategic calculation of the power that controls the territory. Protection is contingent on irrelevance.
The ICJ, the treaty, and the implosion
In 2019, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion finding that Britain’s separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 was unlawful and that Britain should end its colonial administration of the islands “as rapidly as possible.” The UN General Assembly voted 116-6 to endorse the ruling. Mauritius has claimed sovereignty over the Chagos islands since independence. The ICJ opinion gave that claim the force of international legal consensus.
In 2024, after eleven rounds of negotiations under both the Sunak and Starmer governments, the UK and Mauritius reached a deal: Mauritius would receive full sovereignty over the archipelago. The UK would lease Diego Garcia for 99 years, extendable by 40 more with mutual agreement. The UK would pay approximately $4.5 billion over the initial lease — roughly $220 million annually for the first three years, $160 million annually thereafter, plus a $53 million trust fund for Chagossians and a $60 million annual development grant. The deal was structured to satisfy the ICJ, preserve the military base, and provide Chagossians a path — however narrow — toward return to the outer islands.
Then Trump called it “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY.” The U.S. initially supported the deal under Biden. Trump reversed course in January 2026, slamming the treaty and warning that Chinese or Russian interference could follow Mauritian sovereignty. The UK Parliament paused ratification to regain U.S. support. The treaty — signed, agreed, and backed by international law — sits in legislative limbo because the tenant objects to the landlord changing.
The Iran missile attack in March 2026 further complicated ratification. Treaty opponents — led by Nigel Farage and right-wing parliamentarians — seized on the attack to argue that sovereignty transfer would endanger the base. Treaty supporters countered that the deal explicitly preserves U.S.-UK military access for a century and that sovereignty transfer under international law is exactly the kind of institutional stability that military basing requires. The Western Sahara post documented how Morocco’s occupation is being legitimized through diplomatic exhaustion — the international community slowly accepting facts on the ground. Diego Garcia is the UK version: a colonial occupation that the ICJ has ruled unlawful, that the UN General Assembly has voted to end, and that the occupying power is delaying because the military value of the territory exceeds the political cost of noncompliance.
The Chagossians in 2026
The Chagossians — now numbering approximately 10,000, spread across Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the UK — were not consulted in the treaty negotiations. Some Chagossian groups support the deal as the best available path to return. Others oppose it, arguing that Mauritius does not represent their interests and that the treaty prioritizes the military base over the right of return. The deal permits Chagossian resettlement on the outer islands but not on Diego Garcia, where the base occupies most of the habitable land. The trust fund — $53 million — is, for a population deported from its homeland fifty-eight years ago, approximately $5,300 per person.
The Somaliland post documented a population that built a functioning state and cannot achieve recognition. The Chagossians are the opposite case: a population that was removed from a functioning homeland, scattered across three countries, and is now watching two governments negotiate the terms of their return without including them at the table. The Myanmar post documented populations that are simultaneously citizens of a state they’re fighting and refugees from territories they govern. The Chagossians are simultaneously citizens of Mauritius and the UK, exiles from a territory that neither government will allow them to fully access, and beneficiaries of a treaty they had no role in drafting.
The rendition question
In 2008, the UK government admitted — after years of denials — that CIA rendition flights had twice used Diego Garcia as a refueling stop. Subsequent investigations suggested the facility may have been used more extensively than the two acknowledged flights, though the full extent remains classified. The use of Diego Garcia for rendition — transporting terrorism suspects to black sites for interrogation without legal process — places the island in the Shadowcraft course’s analytical framework alongside the GRU’s covert operations, the Stasi’s commercial espionage, and the Wagner Group’s mercenary deployments — state power exercised through deniable infrastructure, in locations selected precisely because they are distant enough from legal oversight to operate without accountability. Diego Garcia’s remoteness was its military virtue. The same remoteness made it useful for activities that could not withstand scrutiny on the mainland.
Why it’s in the course
Diego Garcia is the Off The Map case study in colonial military extraction — a territory whose indigenous population was deported to build a base, whose sovereignty has been ruled illegal by the world’s highest court, whose occupier is delaying compliance because the military tenant objects, and whose strategic value has been validated by a missile attack from a country 2,500 miles away that nobody thought could reach it. Northern Cyprus is a garrison territory with a population that lives there. Diego Garcia is a garrison territory whose population was removed so the garrison could exist. Abkhazia is a client territory resisting its patron’s terms. Diego Garcia is a client territory whose terms were set by the patron fifty-eight years ago and have never been renegotiated by the people they displaced. Transnistria collapsed when the patron cut the gas. Diego Garcia’s patron is the United States military, and that patron’s commitment — validated by B-2 bombers, Iranian missiles, and a war that has expanded into the Indian Ocean — is not going anywhere.
This is the kind of place our Off The Map course was built to map — where a population was gassed their dogs, deported 1,200 miles, told the move was temporary, and has been waiting fifty-eight years to return, while the base that replaced them launched bombers into Yemen, received missiles from Iran, hosted rendition flights the government denied for years, and is now the subject of a $4.5 billion sovereignty treaty that the world’s highest court says is required, the UN General Assembly voted 116-6 to support, the departing population was not consulted on, and the tenant is blocking because the president of the United States called it an act of great stupidity — on an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean where there is nothing for a thousand miles in any direction except the strategic value that made it worth stealing.