With the return of the expedition to Blenheim Reef and outer islands of the Chagos, things return now to the dispute between Mauritius and Maldives at the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea where both are fighting over the maritime boundary north of the Chagos. The shadow of the UK hangs over this seemingly bilateral dispute with Maldives being criticised for marching to London’s tune. Here is how Maldives has become the UK’s proxy throughout this conflict.

The history of the UK in Maldives

With the return of the Mauritian-sponsored expedition to Blenheim Reef and the outer islands of the Chagos Archipelago, it remains to be seen whether any of the information gathered in the expedition will be used by Mauritius at the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). Mauritius and Maldives are currently embroiled in a bilateral dispute at the ITLOS, both contesting maritime boundaries between the north of the Chagos and south of Maldives, with both states claiming a 95,828 squarekilometre patch of sea. Throughout this process, opinion within Mauritius has criticised the Maldivian government for acting like a proxy for the United Kingdom (UK). “This is typical of the UK’s history of divide and rule,” says Mauritius’ ex-foreign secretary Vijay Makhan, “if it is in their interest they will arouse opposition, and in this context, they have used the Maldives.”

To understand the influence that the UK wields over Maldives’ foreign policy, it is important to understand how far back London’s influence stretches. Maldives officially became a UK protectorate in 1887, it governed itself internally but relied on London for foreign relations and defence. But the UK’s role in Maldives increased tremendously with the onset of World War 2. With Imperial Japan threatening to overrun the UK in Singapore and India, London opened a secret airbase in Maldives’ Gan island, part of the Southern Addu Atoll in the Maldives. After the war and with a wave of decolonisation in South-East and South Asia, the UK had to withdraw its forces from its airbases in Sri Lanka and Karachi and in 1956 secured a deal to formally station its air force in Gan instead on a 100-year lease, including an additional 440,000 square kilometres to set up radio stations, all in return for paying Maldives £2,000 a year.

When in 1957, the Maldivian government wanted to increase the rent for the Gan Airbase, two years later, a secessionist movement erupted within the southern atolls led by Abdullah Afeef who declared three of those atolls, including the Addu Atoll hosting the Gan airbase, the United Suvadive Republic. He got support amongst fishermen from the southern atolls opposed to the Maldivian government’s attempts to nationalise fish exports, forcing them to export their dried fish through Malé instead of directly to Sri Lanka themselves. Afeef wanted recognition from the UK, which never came. In 1960, the UK signed a new 30-year deal for the base with Malé in return for a payment of £750,000 between 1960 and 1965. London subsequently withdrew any dealings with Afeef’s breakaway republic, clearing the way for Malé to crush the secessionist movement in 1963, during which time the UK swiftly spirited Afeef into exile to the Seychelles where he died in 1993.

The Gan airbase was far from unpopular in the Maldives. When in 1968, the British government of Harold Wilson announced that it was abandoning military bases in Malaysia, Singapore, the Persian Gulf and Maldives, it raised worries in Malé. 900 Maldivians worked on the Gan base and their salaries brought in much-needed foreign exchange, particularly at a time when the Sri Lankan market for Maldivian dried fish was collapsing; the UK had provided healthcare facilities on Addu Atoll and the presence of the Gan airbase and the economy that had emerged around it saw the population of Addu Atoll swell from just 6,000 to 17,000 people. When the Gan airbase was officially closed, there was nothing to take its place to economically sustain the area. The Maldivian government complained that although the UK left behind equipment and facilities worth £11 million, keeping them running and the people employed cost the Maldives £46,000 per year which it could not sustain. Eventually Addu Atoll fell into disrepair, and the site of the former Gan airbase only re-opened as a civilian airport in 2007.

While Maldives is more famous these days as a battleground between India and China vying for influence in the region, the exit of the UK’s military in 1976 did not mean the loss of its influence there. Economically, the Maldivian economy relies heavily on tourism and fish exports to the UK. According to the UK’s department of International Trade, Maldivian imports in 2020-2021 were worth £106 million. “The UK has provided many facilities to Maldives; even when Mohamed Nasheed was injured, he was taken to the UK for medical treatment, as you would expect between countries sharing deep ties,” argues Makhan. He is of course referring to the continuing political role that the UK plays in Maldivian politics. When in 2021, Nasheed, the leader of the ruling MDP party and current speaker, was injured in a bomb blast in Malé, he was taken to the UK for treatment. And in May last year, the UK and Australia announced they would be participating in the probe into the attack.

The shadow of the UK

The lingering influence of the UK in Maldives has meant that the UK has had a role to play in Maldivian initiatives when it comes to the Chagos. With both the UK and Maldives playing a game of convenience to forestall any understandings with Mauritius. In 1992, officials from the UK and Maldives conducted talks to demarcate the boundary between Maldivian and Chagossian waters. The UK agreed to draw a ‘median line’ across the disputed zone. This agreement was never formalized and never made its way into Maldives’ Maritime Zones Act that was passed in 1996. These talks did not involve Mauritius. “Nothing came out of that,” says ex-foreign minister Arvin Boolell. When in 2001, Mauritius offered to start talks to settle the boundaries, Maldives did not respond.

Then in 2010, Mauritius once again started reaching out to Maldives. This time in reaction to the UK unilaterally declaring the Chagos a marine protected area. Both Mauritius and Maldives opposed the move from the UK, but for different reasons; Mauritius saw the declaration of the MPA as a violation of UK’s commitments given in 1965 to respect its fishing rights in the Chagos while Maldives saw it as involving maritime areas that it claimed around the Chagos. “The object of the MPA was always political,” Boolell insists. It was more to prevent Chagossians from pushing claims for resettlement in UK courts. Mauritius took the UK to an arbitral tribunal under annex VII of the UNCLOS and in March 2011 invited Mohamed Nasheed, then President of Maldives as the chief guest at Mauritius’ national day celebrations. Boolell was Mauritian foreign minister at the time and recalls. “We tried to start talks with Maldives, but they never seemed very interested.” During Nasheed’s visit, the former Maldivian president gave a speech at the state banquet during his visit. “He did not say much and there was a joint communique issued afterwards pledging that both countries would work together to resolve the boundary question. But that was just diplomatic talk,” says Boolell. The joint Mauritian-Maldivian opposition to the UK’s announcement of an MPA was a missed opportunity, insists Makhan, “when you have a common stand, this would have been the time to harmonize the policies of both states. We could have come out of that MPA business as objective allies”. In 2015 the arbitral tribunal decided in favour of Mauritius and against the UK’s declaration of an MPA around the Chagos.

Until that time, the Mauritian foreign policy establishment was toying with the idea of proposing a joint management area with the Maldives along the lines of the joint management area Mauritius had successfully concluded with Seychelles. “The difference was that we did not have any boundary disputes with Seychelles and Maldives felt like if it was interested in extending its continental shelf it could always reach a deal with India or Sri Lanka instead rather than Mauritius. Seychelles was always a different ballgame,” Boolell points out. That, and the Maldives was always wary of dealing with Mauritius. “This was due to three reasons,” Boolell lists them out, “first was the economic importance of the UK to Maldives, second was that Maldives always looked to take the lead as the spokesman for small island states when it came to climate change and maritime policy and so felt overtaken by events and Mauritius and Seychelles reached their joint management deal and third, Maldives always felt like it did not get the same importance in the region from India that Mauritius did”. The idea of sharing with Maldives soon died down.

The attention from the US

In February 2019, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) came out with an advisory opinion recognizing the sovereignty of Mauritius over the Chagos. That was swiftly followed by a resolution at the UN General Assembly demanding that the UK quit the Chagos and return it to Mauritius. Following the advisory opinion, Port Louis once again reached out to Maldives for talks to settle the boundary issue. However, this was rebuffed by Malé. At the UN General Assembly, “Maldives was one of the few countries not to back Mauritius,” reminds Makhan. The other states that opposed Mauritius were the Unites States (US), UK, Australia, Hungary and Israel. Since Mauritius started reaching out to Malé in 2001 to settle the maritime borders, Malé’s attitude has been the same: “Maldives does not recognize Mauritian sovereignty over the Chagos and because of that it maintains that Mauritius has no authority to negotiate Maldives’ maritime boundary with the Chagos,” explains Boolell.

One reason the Maldives has been unwilling to change its position in the face of the UN and the ICJ is that at the same time it was actively being courted by the US. In recent years Malé had increased its ties with China, Beijing opened an embassy there in 2012, signed a trade agreement and Maldives officially became part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). That not only raised concern in India, but after the Solih presidency came in in 2018, the US started looking to wean Maldives away from Beijing and try to make it part of its ‘Indo-Pacific’ strategy to check Beijing’s influence in the region. “Towards the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, his secretary of state Mike Pompeo made a dash for Maldives,” recalls Makhan. In 2020, the US announced that it would establish an embassy in the Maldives and in September 2020, Maldivians were taken by surprise when their government announced that it had signed a defence agreement with Washington D.C. In April 2021, a small cohort of US army advisers landed in Malé to help train Maldivian security forces. A Maldives being courted by the US like this would be wary of rocking the boat by backing Mauritius over the Chagos and potentially producing problems for the US military base on Diego Garcia. “All this attention also made Maldives more confident,” Makhan offers.

Dancing to London’s tune?

It is at the ITLOS that it became clear just how Maldives was backing the UK’s stance over the Chagos to the hilt. London reacted to the ICJ’s decision by downplaying its significance, pointing out how it was non-binding and hence did not settle who had sovereignty over the Chagos and repeating its claims that it had sovereignty over the archipelago in the form of the so-called British Indian Ocean Territories (BIOT). So-called because the BIOT was declared by an order in council and not by any actual legislation in parliament. “The UK never thought that matters would reach such a turn where they are now looking more and more like a rogue state ignoring international law,” argues Makhan.

But how much Maldives has identified itself with London’s position was plain to see in the strange argument it had made at the ITLOS. Malé objected to the proceedings by arguing that the Chagos was still a matter of dispute between the UK and Mauritius and since the question of who sovereign over the Chagos was still not settled, it made little sense to negotiate with Mauritius. In part, this is a restatement of what Maldives has maintained since at least 2001 but after the ICJ verdict, it was also an exact copy of the UK’s argument and official position on the ICJ. “It showed that Maldives did not even reluctantly accept the ICJ verdict,” says Boolell. One of the lawyers representing Maldives at the ITLOS, Professor Payam Akhayan, said, “In simple terms, Mauritius is using this chamber to settle its territorial dispute with the UK, at the expense of the Maldives. This is the very definition of an abuse of process.” By completely ignoring the ICJ and the UN in this way, Maldives was doing precisely what the UK was. “If you look at the stand the Maldives took at the ITLOS, you would think it was the UK taking the stand and talking,” says Makhan. If London thought that just because it said that it was sovereign over the Chagos, that was enough. Apparently, at the ITLOS, Maldives thought the same thing.

However, in February 2021, the ITLOS dismissed the objections of Maldives, dismissing the repeated claims of the UK over the Chagos to be “mere assertions” and looking at the cumulative conclusions of the arbitral tribunal in 2015, the ICJ, and the UN General Assembly resolutions in 2019 to conclude that the question of sovereignty had effectively been settled. The Chagos Archipelago was Mauritian and the ITLOS had the authority to decide the maritime boundary dispute between Mauritius and Maldives.

This has left the Maldives in a strange position. “What happened at the ITLOS is not just about boundaries but about sovereignty as well. Now that the issue of sovereignty has been settled, the UK has no foreseeable legal avenue left while the Maldives is stuck between the hammer and the anvil,” concludes Boolell, “whatever the ITLOS decides when it comes to the boundaries, the old position of Maldives to refuse to deal with Mauritius by propping up the UK has collapsed and cannot be maintained.” Maldives and Mauritius are now neighbours under international law. And both Port-Louis and Malé will have to get used to that.