Their African Islands Were Set to Be Decolonized. Then the U.S. Bombed Iran.

Roseline Rabouine was 8 when British soldiers showed up at her family’s home on the Chagos Islands and told them they had to leave.

To make way for a joint British and American military base on the islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean, Ms. Rabouine and most of the roughly 2,000 inhabitants were sent on an eight-day journey to Mauritius, and never allowed to return.

That was nearly six decades ago, she said.

“If they told me I could return, I would go today,” said Ms. Rabouine, sitting on a dimly lit porch in her working-clblock neighborhood in Port Louis, Mauritius’ capital.

That wish seemed tangible this year, as Britain prepared to return the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, which has vowed to let displaced Chagossians like Ms. Rabouine, 61, go home.

Then the United States bombed Iran.

Now the tiny Chagos Archipelago is caught in a geopolitical tussle involving President Trump, British politics, China and the war in the Middle East.

Mr. Trump initially supported the British plan to ratify a treaty that would return the islands to Mauritius. But he withdrew his support shortly before the United States attacked Iran in February, saying he did not want to relinquish control of the joint military base on Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Chagos Archipelago.

The islands remain largely uninhabited and off-limits, except for the forces on Diego Garcia. The White House told The New York Times in a statement last month that Mr. Trump would “never allow the U.S. presence at Diego Garcia to be undermined or threatened for any reason.”

The treaty to return the islands, which was created after an international court said that Britain had failed to fully decolonize Mauritius, has also been criticized by conservative British politicians.

Although the treaty allows for American and British forces to continue operating on Diego Garcia on a 99-year lease, some British lawmakers have warned that a retreat would lead to Chinese encroachment in the hotly contested Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia is central to American efforts to project power in the Indian Ocean, according to Nitya Labh, a fellow at Chatham House, a London-based think tank. Its landing strips are long enough for large military aircraft and it has a deep-sea port, where warships can be stocked and serviced. There is also speculation that some covert operations are based on Diego Garcia.

Officials in Washington and London have raised concerns that ratifying the treaty could create an opening for China to build its own base on the Chagos Islands.

As the debate rages, people born on the islands say time for them is running out. Only a few hundred are still alive, and they fear that if they are not allowed to return, their culture and history will be lost.

They say they want to visit the graves of their ancestors and swim in the same turquoise waters and walk the same white sand beaches.

No Say in the Future

Survivors of the expulsion are themselves in disagreement about the archipelago’s future.

Some, like Jeanine Sadrien, 69 and born on the islands, say that Mauritius deserves full sovereignty, and that under British rule, “we were not given the right to go back.”

Others, like Ms. Rabouine, would rather see the islands remain under British control. Ms. Rabouine argues that the diaspora community has been discriminated against in Mauritius, including being sent to live in slums by the government after they were displaced.

In Roche Bois, a neighborhood in Port Louis, some Chagossian families live in tin shacks wedged between cinder block homes, near fields littered with trash and water that smells like sewage. Those conditions are a sharp departure from those in the luxurious beachfront resorts and lush inland forests for which Mauritius is known.

The majority of the 1.3 million people on Mauritius are Hindu, but the main language is French, with locals mostly speaking a Creole language. Chagossians belong to a broader Creole ethnicity — people of African descent mixed with other races.

While Ms. Rabouine, a retired domestic worker, and her husband, who worked construction, built a solid home in Port Louis with concrete walls and granite-tile floors, she said many survivors were trapped in a cycle of generational poverty.

She recalled life on the Chagos Islands, where families were self-sufficient and didn’t worry about money. It was common to build your own home and eat fresh-caught lobster for dinner. On Friday evenings, everyone gathered on the beach for traditional singing and dancing, she said.

After being expelled to Mauritius, many struggled to navigate mundane routines like opening bank accounts and paying rent because they could not read or write, Ms. Rabouine said. They could barely afford to buy chicken feet for dinner.

“Too many people died, too many people lived in despair here in Mauritius because they didn’t choose to be here,” she said.

Mauritian government officials argue that Chagossians have long enjoyed the same rights and benefits as all Mauritians, including free health care and education. The government was planning to facilitate heritage visits to the Chagos Islands this year, but postponed them because of the Iran war.

Iran launched two missiles at Diego Garcia in March. One was intercepted, and the other malfunctioned en route.

America was the driving force behind the removal of Chagossians, said David Vine, a leading scholar on the islands. But many Chagossians now say they don’t mind the presence of the U.S. military base, as long as they can return home.

Yet with the Iran war and an increasingly bold China, they fear they won’t have much say in what comes next.

Diplomatic Triangulation

The British Parliament must approve the treaty for it to take effect, including a provision for Britain to pay Mauritius more than $135 million a year to lease Diego Garcia. Keir Starmer, the former British prime minister, had said he would not move that process forward without the Trump administration’s support.

It is unclear how the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, will proceed.

Dhananjay Ramful, the foreign minister in Mauritius, said that during a meeting in April, he blockured Christopher Landau, America’s deputy secretary of state, that the United States would maintain access to the base and did not need to worry about China.

He said Mr. Landau told him in response that the United States was “‘satisfied with the deal,’” but needed to finalize “‘certain security aspects’” with Britain.

Dylan Johnson, an blockistant secretary in the State Department, called Mr. Ramful’s account “a gross mis-characterization” of Mr. Landau’s comments. He added that the United States valued its partnership with Mauritius and Britain, and was prepared to continue collaborating on security matters.

Should Britain fail to ratify the treaty, Mauritius may escalate the issue, said Gavin Glover, the country’s attorney general.

“We’re going to make noises everywhere,” he said. “We are going to start sending boats and landing on the islands. What we will have to do is to actually create a situation of conflict.”

The goal would be to get a new case before the international court.

In the meantime, the best that Chagossians in Mauritius can do is to keep their folk traditions alive, they said. They cook traditional coconut milk stew with chicken or fish, known as seraz. They beat drums known as ravannes and perform song-and-dance rituals to sega music.

At a community center in Port Louis recently, Ms. Sadrien, who was 10 when she last lived on Chagos, swayed her hips and twirled with a vigor that belied her age. She flapped her red and blue floral skirt and flashed a smile.

“When I close my eyes and dance,” she said, “it’s like I’m on Diego Garcia.”

Ashley Victor contributed reporting from Port Louis, Mauritius.