Strategically located between East Africa and Southeast Asia, Diego Garcia serves as a surveillance centre for the Middle East. It was critical to air operations during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mauritius is getting sovereignty over the remote Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, but Britain will continue to administer the strategically crucial island of Diego Garcia for another century, preserving the Anglo-American joint base on

Britain struck a deal allowing it to keeping control of a strategically important UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean for another century, while ceding sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.