The children who live on Chile's Eduardo Frei Montalva Air Force Base are
pawns in a great game in the Antarctic that they can but dimly understand.
The cluster of snowbound cabins, a 2½hour flight from the tip of South America
to the bottom of the world, is home to a permanent population of eighty that
includes ten married couples with a total of 12 children, aged 1 to 17.
Residents describe the remote outpost as a colonia.
"It's strange and difficult but it's super-beautiful," said Alumna Jofr?, 12,
whose father is chief of operations at the ice-covered airfield. "We have
had amazingly beautiful experiences. We ski and snowboard and sledge."
There are downsides: "It's always the same. We go to the gym or to school. We
always see the same people. It's a little complicated."
Antarctica, once the torment of explorers such as Scott and Shackleton, is
slowly being settled by mankind as rival nations make overlapping claims to
the vast expanse that is a tenth of the total landmass of the Earth. Global
warming, shrinking ice and soaring oil prices all conspire to fuel
competition for the world's final frontier. Britain has rattled its rivals
by signalling that it intends effectively to extend its Antarctic territory
by more than 50 per cent by claiming an additional 386,000 sq miles
(100,000sq km) of the adjoining seabed.
The Frei base sits on King George Island, off the tip of the Antarctic
Peninsula on territory claimed by Britain and Argentina as well as Chile.
Once a remote whaling station, the island is now known as the unofficial
"capital of Antarctica".
The first surprise on landing in a Chilean military C130 transport aircraft is
that my BlackBerry works. I check my e-mail and call my startled wife in New
York to tell her that I am surrounded by luminous turquoise-tinted icebergs.
As well as its own mobile phone signal, the Frei base boasts a bank, a post
office, a hospital, a supermarket, a bar, a chapel, a school and an FM radio
station, provocatively called Sovereignty.
At Russia's nearby Bellingshausen base, staff have reconstructed a wooden
Orthdox church with a decorative spire that was first built in Siberia. At
the Great Wall base beyond that, the Chinese operate a gift shop selling
penguin statuettes to tourists who come ashore from cruise ships.
A short flight over King George Island in a 12-seat Twin Otter ski-plane
reveals not only majestic icebergs sculpted into extraordinary geometric
forms and colonies of sea lions and penguins but also groups of
corrugated-iron cabins and Anderson shelters that make up the international
bases. Argentina, Brazil, Poland, South Korea and Uruguay all maintain
year-round research stations near the Chilean, Russian and Chinese bases.
Preventing a new Falklands-style conflict is the fact that Britain, Argentina
and Chile are all signatories to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which
voluntarily freezes the overlapping sovereignty claims. Nevertheless, Chile
treats the aircraft ride from the southern city of Punta Arenas on the South
American mainland to the Frei base in Antarctica as an internal flight that
does not require a passport.
A travel agency in Punta Arenas even offers flights for tourists at $2,500
(£1,200) for a day-trip and $3,500 for an overnight stay at the Chilean
base. Once they are there, Chilean soldiers will sell them a souvenir
T-shirt emblazoned with a penguin and the words "Chilean Antarctica".
All three countries continue to affirm sovereignty by deliberately asserting
their presence on the icy continent. Linda Capper, a spokeswoman for the
British Antarctic Survey, which runs British research stations in the
Antarctic, said that Britain performs administrative acts in the territory -
a traditional test of sovereignty.
The British Antarctic Territory issues its own postage stamps and all British
research stations have their own post office. British base commanders are
sworn in as magistrates and conduct official duties such as stamping
visitors' passports. But Britain is lagging in the "baby race" in Antarctica
that its rivals Chile and Argentina seem bent on pursuing.
Argentina, intent on establishing sovereignty by having its citizens born in
the disputed territory, resorted to flying SÍlvia Morella de Palma, the
seven-months pregnant wife of an Argentine army captain, to the Esperanza
base that her husband commanded. When she gave birth to Emilio Marcos de
Palma on January 7, 1978, he became the first "native-born" Antarctican.
Chile responded in kind when Juan Pablo Camacho was born at the Frei base to
become the first Chilean born in Antarctica. Residents say that two more
Chilean babies have since been born at Frei. No British baby has been born
at a British Antarctic research station, Ms Capper said.
The 1991 Madrid Protocol to the Antarctic Treaty declares the icy continent "a
natural reserve, devoted to peace and science" and outlaws mining or
oil-drilling for 50 years.
But polar experts fear that the rival national claims could lead to conflict
as global warming makes it increasingly tempting to exploit mineral
resources, such as oil and gas, in the Antarctic, particularly on the more
accessible Antarctic Peninsula.
Gazing out over the unspoilt waters, Gino Casassa, a Chilean scientist and
member of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, said that he is afraid that there will be oil platforms off King
George Island in 50 years' time.
"This is a big threat," he said. "I would not like to see that happen but it
will be inevitable. There will be a big fight over these competing issues:
keeping it pristine for scientific work and the exploitation of resources.
Especially with deglacierisation, it can become commercially viable."
Jack Child, the author of Antarctica and South American Geopolitics, said:
"Looking ahead 20, 30, 40, 50 years, with new technologies and depletion of
oil there might be an attempt to undermine the treaty to get at that oil."
He said that finding oil on the Antarctic Peninsula was "the worst possible
scenario, but also the most possible".
Britain made diplomatic waves by confirming last month that it may soon file a
claim to 386,000 square miles of seabed with the UN, based on the
continental shelf extending out from British Antarctic Territory. Chile and
Argentina announced that they would lodge similar claims. Chile said that it
would reopen its Arturo Prat naval base next year. And China dispatched 91
scientists yesterday to expand its two research stations and build a third
station near Dome A, a forbidding inland plateau at an altitude of 4,000
metres (13,000ft).
"Our big concern is that everyone says it's simply to file their claim, yet
it's clear there is this domino response from the Antarctic claimants," said
Karen Sack, head of oceans for the environmentalist group Greenpeace.
Chile scored a diplomatic coup on Friday by hosting Ban Ki Moon, the UN
Secretary-General, on a visit to Antarctica. Although the UN chief toured
bases belonging to Chile, Uruguay and his native South Korea, he flew on
board a Chilean military aircraft sitting beside the Chilean Environment
Minister and UN Ambassador.
But Mr Ban, perhaps unwittingly, appeared to endorse an idea originally
proposed by Malaysia and other developing nations in the late 1980s to
declare Antarctica the "common heritage of mankind" - a
proposal opposed by Antarctic claimants such as Britain, Argentina and
Chile. Mr Ban declared: "This is a common heritage. We must preserve all
this continent in an environmentally responsible way."
‘The world will derive no benefit from it'
- Captain Cook made the first recorded circumnavigation of Antarctica in
1773. Though this helps to establish Britain's claim to the continent, Cook
believed it to be so cold and barren that "the world will derive no benefit
from it"
- Britain's Antarctic claim also rests on ownership of King George Island,
claimed in 1819 by William Smith. It was later claimed by Chile and
Argentina
- In 1911 the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first to reach the
pole. He narrowly beat the British expedition led by Captain Scott
- Ernest Shackleton led another British expedition in 1914-16. His ship,
Endurance, became icebound for ten months and he and five others sailed
1,300km in small boats for help
- Britain established a secret Antarctic base during the Second World War,
Operation Tabarin. It was the start of a permanent British presence there
- After the war the British Antarctic Survey took the base over as the first
of five stations that it now operates on the continent
From the
Times Online
Antartica 
