This Week: Book Review of Island of Shame

"Quote" of the Week

Book Review: Island of Shame

Resources on Diego Garcia and The Empire of Which It is a Part

Greetings,

I said a couple of weeks ago that I might do a book review and, wonder of wonders, I actually did one. I don't read too many books, as I'm too busy reading much-more-boring things in the course of my research. The book I am reviewing this week started out like all the rest: pick it up and race through it looking for the bits that are relevant to whatever-it-is that I'm researching. But once I picked up David Vine's "Island of Shame," I just couldn't put it down. Once you read my review I hope you'll see why I recommend it.

What I don't say in the review is that the book is really well-written. That is, it's a page-turner, a real "What happens next?" type of book. In my experience it is terribly rare to find a book that 1) Tells me things I didn't know; 2) Honors the complexity of its subject without getting lost in it, and: 3) Is fun to read! You may find the book at the library. If not, patronize your local, independent bookstore by going to buy your own copy. You won't regret it.

Thanks to all of you who have sent in such thoughtful comments in the past week. I really find your comments useful, and often enlightening! Also, those of you who continue to get around to sending in your Pledges: You are the best! Thank you!

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week

The story of Diego Garcia

Writing in the London Guardian of October 11 2004, Australian journalist and film maker John Pilger opened with these words:

"There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia. The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible."

Book Review: Island of Shame

I've been doing a lot of research recently about the military aspects of the U.S. Empire. Of all the things I have read on the subject, one resource stands out from the crowd, and I cannot recommend it highly enough for those who wish to not only understand the nature of modern Empire, but to do something about it. I'm talking about a book called "Island of Shame" by David Vine. Published in 2009 by the Princeton University Press, the book has gone largely unreviewed in the corporate media, yet deserves a wide audience. I'd like to say a few words about why I recommend it so highly.

The full title of the book is "Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia." Diego Garcia is the largest island in a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean called the Chagos Archipelago. Before there was a U.S. military base there, the island was home to an indigenous population who call themselves Chagossians. Island of Shame recounts the story of how "between 1968 and 1973, in a plot carefully hidden from the world, the United States and Great Britain exiled all 1,500-2,000 islanders to create a major U.S. military base" on the Chagossian island. Major, indeed. As I pointed out in Nygaard Notes #440, respected military analyst John Pike refers to the base on Diego Garcia as "the single most important military facility [that the U.S. has] got."

While the unfortunate fate of a tiny population residing on a tiny group of islands in the Indian Ocean may seem of little interest to a U.S. audience, Island of Shame connects their story to the larger story of the construction and maintenance of the U.S. Empire. In the process, Vine explains how the story of the Chagossians begins as far back as 1783, when the first Chagossians were brought to the islands as slaves, and how it continues up until today, as the exiles continue their efforts to return to their homeland.

Three Threads, One Story

I spoke in the last Nygaard Notes about the usefulness of thinking in both a "bottom-up" way and in a "top-down" way. Recall that bottom-up, or inductive, thinking involves observing things as they are and then working our way "up" to a generalization, or theory, that explains what we are observing. Top-down, or deductive, thinking is where we take the theories that we already know about and use them to explain, or categorize, the things we are observing. Island of Shame utilizes both ways of thinking, in the process illustrating just how useful the combination can be.

Island of Shame begins with an intensely personal and close-up look at the shattered lives of the islanders displaced by the imperial forces at work in the 1950s and 1960s. By offering this close look at some of the individual people in the story, Vine offers readers some of the facts necessary to think inductively, providing raw material for the forming of an explanation of the forces that produce such results.

Using the bottom-up method of thinking in a different way, Vine digs deeply into the documentary record, unearthing obscure references from academia, media of the period, and many internal and difficult-to-access documents from deep in official government archives. Vine skillfully chooses excerpts from these formerly unseen documents to provide a fascinating "inside" view of the bureaucratic squabbles, power plays, personal obsessions, and territorial pecking orders that were at play in the upper echelons of the two Imperial governments during the post-World War II period.

Vine also utilizes the top-down method of analysis, which we see most clearly in Chapters 2 and 3 as Vine lays out the overarching strategy that provides the crucial context for making sense of the detailed and personal stories laid out elsewhere in the book. In fact, the thirty pages that make up these two chapters—"The Bases of Empire" and "The Strategic Island Concept and The Changing of the Imperial Guard"—could stand alone as one of the best brief overviews available of the Imperial forces that shaped the post-World War II world and that continue to shape our world in the more recent period, since the fall of the Soviet Union.

As Vine weaves together these three threads—the psycho-social thread, the institutional/systems thread, and the historical thread—the reader is left with a deep and nuanced understanding of the complex reality that binds together the so-called First World and the Third, the subjects of the Empire and its beneficiaries, the global rich and the global poor. It's a remarkable achievement.

The Strategic Island Concept

It is in Chapter 3 that Vine introduces a plan developed by a Navy consultant named Stu Barber, the premise of which "was his recognition that in the age of decolonization, local peoples and the governments of newly independent nations were increasingly endangering the viability of many of the Navy's overseas bases." Barber's "long-term solution" to this danger was to find base locations lacking "local problems." And "the best place to find such locations...was on strategically located, lightly populated, isolated islands still controlled by friendly Western powers." This was called the Strategic Island Concept. Few islands in the world were more strategic than Diego Garcia in the 1960s, and thus was the fate of the Chagossians sealed.

The book is filled with telling quotes from formerly-secret documents, quotes that reveal a history of secret government-to-government payments, bald-faced lies concocted in high-level backrooms, and the intentional evasion of responsibility for known violations of the spirit and the letter of international law.

The author, who is an anthropologist and a member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, describes the deep scars and pain among the Chagossians as they struggle to adapt to their forced exile, drawing on extensive interviews with survivors now residing in Mauritius, the Seychelles Islands, and elsewhere. He recounts in heartbreaking detail the transporting of the Chagossians, along with some horses from the islands, onto ships bound for Mauritius, 1,200 miles away, the decks of which were "covered in manure, urine, and vomit" during the four-day forced voyage. One can only imagine what this must have been like for people whose ancestors were brought to the island 200 years ago as slaves in the French colonial system.

Previous to forcing the Chagossians onto these ships, orders were given by the British commissioner of the "British Indian Ocean Territory," of which Diego Garcia is a part, to exterminate the Chagossians pet dogs. After unsuccessful attempts to shoot the dogs "with the help of [U.S.] Seabees armed with M16 rifles," an attempt was made to poison the dogs. When this also proved unsuccessful, the final extermination was carried out by trapping the dogs in a shed and gassing them "with exhaust piped in from U.S. military vehicles," then burning the carcasses in the shed. "The Chagossians were left to watch and ponder their fate," reports Vine.

The story of the dogs illustrates one of the most revealing aspects of the tragedy of Diego Garcia and the modern U.S. Empire: The role of the United States as invisible puppet-master, with the British government—and, to a much lesser extent, the Mauritian government—doing the dirty work. As Vine explains "Although the British Government and its agents performed most of the physical work involved in displacing the Chagossians, the U.S. Government ordered, orchestrated, and financed the expulsion." One of the results is that, while there is now a Chagos Support Association in the United Kingdom, no such organization exists in the United States. Indeed, it's a rare USAmerican who has even heard of the Chagos archipelago, let alone of its role in the U.S. Imperial project.

As wrenching as it is to read Vine's account of the suffering of the Chagossians, Vine also makes it clear that there are many stories of heroism, resistance, and morality within the larger story of Empire. Of particular note is the story of an apparent change of heart on the part of Stu Barber, former Navy man and the father of the Strategic Island Concept, who later in his life spent some years working to get the U.S. to "take steps to redress the inexcusably inhuman wrongs inflicted [on the Chagossians] by the British at our insistence." The book ends with two sections, called "The Effects of Empire and What We Must Do" and "Hope."

Vine alternates throughout his book Island of Shame between intensely close-up views of the shattered lives of the islanders and a comprehensive view of the imperial forces that shattered them. When added to his choice to include an "inside" look at the personalities and imperatives that animate any bureaucracy, Island of Shame in the end leaves readers with a deep and lasting understanding not only of all the parts of a huge and tragic picture, but of how intimately and essentially they are all connected. While looking at each part is vital to understanding the larger picture, the end result is an understanding that is greater than the sum of the parts. There's a powerful lesson in effective thinking here for all who wish to analyze any aspect of the modern world.

Finally, readers of Island of Shame will come to see how certain other realities that modern USAmericans like to think of as no more than historical events or things of the past—such as slavery, colonialism, and "the age of imperialism"—live on today in the memories and the life stories of people like the Chagossians. And, perhaps most importantly, I believe that those who choose to read Island of Shame will see that the Empire is still at work, with consequences that continue to be felt not only by the Chagossians, but by us all.

Resources on Diego Garcia and The Empire of Which It is a Part

The above review focused on the "how" of Vine's book, meaning I chose to highlight the way he put the book together in order to most effectively illuminate the issues involved. Readers may wish to learn more about the "what," as in, what are the details of the Chagossians ongoing struggle, of U.S. military bases, and of the U.S. Empire more broadly. Here are a just a few resources—in addition to the book itself—that you may wish to look at and/or support:

Check out David Vine's website, which includes other reviews of Island of Shame as well as links to some of Vine's speeches, interviews and articles on the Chagos Islanders and their struggle to return home.

If you prefer video to the written word (what are you doing reading Nygaard Notes!) then you may wish to watch Pilger's documentary on Diego Garcia, called "Stealing a Nation." Maybe you can rent it at a video store, or you can buy it from Bullfrog Films here.
Alternatively, you can watch it for free online.

In my review I mentioned the Chagos Support Association in the United Kingdom. It's oriented toward British activism, but non-U.K. readers can get the latest news from their website.

Here in the U.S., the American Friends Service Committee has organized a National Project on Foreign Military Bases. Please support their work in any way you can.

The international version, based in the Netherlands, is called The International Network for the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases.

Back in Nygaard Notes #394 I mentioned the Pentagon's use of anthropologists to aid in the occupation of Iraq. Not all anthropologists support this kind of collaboration with Empire, of course. As evidence, go visit the website of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, of which Vine is a member.

There's more, of course. There's always more. But that is all I will offer for now.