Where In The World Is Diego Garcia?

(infoplease.com) 

Few could accuse you of ignorance for never having heard of Diego Garcia—much less for not knowing that it's not a person but an island. Along with such obscure, far-flung places as Fogo Island off the West Coast of Africa, Pukapuka in the South Pacific, or Bolshevik Island in the Arctic waters north of Siberia, Diego Garcia isn't the sort of place to come tripping off the tongue of even the most geographically sophisticated.

There have been times, however, when the U.S. military has considered this seventeen-square-mile atoll of coral and sand in the middle of the Indian Ocean —with no indigenous inhabitants or natural resources to speak of—one of the most valuable places on Earth. It may again become a strategic hot spot in the near future.

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Diego Garcia was developed as a joint U.S.-U.K. air and naval refueling and support station during the cold war. Located in the middle of the Indian Ocean and out of cyclone range, it was ideal for keeping an eye on the Soviet Union.

In light of the current crisis with Iraq, the U.S. has deployed six additional B-52s to Diego Garcia, bringing up the total to fourteen. It also harbors at least nine Air Force tanker aircraft. Ordinarily there are less than a thousand U.S. military personnel on the island, but that number is multiplying.

Diego Garcia had proved to be critically important during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and may turn out to be even more crucial should another war with Iraq break out: since
Saudi Arabia will not permit the U.S. to launch attacks from their land, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and Diego Garcia* are the closest locations from which U.S. forces can launch their campaigns.

The Portuguese explored Diego Garcia in the 1500s; between 1814 and 1965 it was a dependency of Mauritius. It then became part of the Chagos Archipelao, which belonged to the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory. The island remains a British dependency today.

Although Diego Garcia once had a small indigenous population, the inhabitants, known as the Ilois, were moved to Mauritius in the 1970s so that the island could be turned into a military base—over the strong protestations of other Indian Ocean islands, who objected to having cruise missles as neighbors.

* The fact that the island is nearly 3,000 miles south of Iraq does not pose a great problem. According to the U.S. Air Force, B-52s have an "unrefueled combat range in excess of 8,800 miles." During the Gulf War, B-52s took off from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, launched cruise missiles on Iraq, and returned to Barksdale 35 hours later—the longest non-stop combat mission in the history of the B-52.

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