The State Of Exception: The Moral Ambivalence Of British Aid.

Villagisation is the kind of euphemism that only the most depraved of regimes can come up with. In 1984 it was used by the Derg-Ethiopia's Marxist flavoured military junta, to describe its policy of forcibly relocating hundreds of thousands of peasants from famine-ridden provinces in the north to the sparsely populated south. It is estimated by Amnesty International that 600,000 people were forcibly moved, with another 12 million affected. It is not known how many died, but relocated farmers were given no seed, no drills for wells, and no protection. Thirty years later, Ethiopia's EPRDF government stands accused of the same actions. It is alleged that aid - of which Ethiopia receives $3bn a year - is being used to pursue a policy of agricultural reform directed at expanding the regime's power base, reward cronies, and punish its ethnic and political enemies.

Just before his ignominious departure from office, Britain's International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell signed off on sending £16bn of aid to Rwanda, despite allegations that it was, yet again, sponsoring rebels in its titanic, anarchic, neighbour, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has, since assuming office in 2000, emphasised his 'Vision 2020' focusing on economic development as a salve to Rwanda's post-genocide troubles. 'We had to have the vision in place because we were very conscious of where we are coming from, and we had to change things, not only the physical things, but also the mindset. We had to involve Rwandans,' he said in Atlanta last month. His message to donors is equally clear: it was his government that ended the genocide, not the West, and that in helping his regime and Rwanda's economy, the West is paying back the debt it assumed in 1994.

Two countries with terrible histories; Ethiopia's of dictatorship, famine, civil war and a protracted bloodletting that, one could argue, did not end from 1974 until the ceasefire with Eritrea in 2000. Rwanda, meanwhile, struggled with ethnic strife that boiled over into three months of orgiastic murder until Kagame and his RPF forces invaded with the backing of Uganda to instate some sort of order. Ever since, both countries have been huge recipients of foreign aid; Ethiopia receives more than any other country except Iraq, Afghanistan and Indonesia, while Rwanda has funnelled its development loans into a burgeoning services sector so that it now styles itself the 'Singapore of Africa.'

The question of when to give aid is one that has always bedevilled Western governments. The legacy of the Ethiopian Famine, where Bono and other celebrities shamed the Thatcher and Reagan administrations into disbursing aid to a Marxist government, weighs no less heavily in politicians' minds than the harrowing images of starving children which, although shocking when broadcast by Michael Burke in 1984, have now become all but ubiquitous. With International Development one of the few departments saved from the coalition's budget cuts, why do such guilt-based arguments still have such resonance within Whitehall?

In his 2005 work The State of Exception, Italian academic Giorgio Agamben studied the concept of the 'state of emergency' in politics. His argument runs that governments assume 'emergency powers' when the political community feels that the state itself is under threat and thus the difference between logos-reason, and praxis-action, collapses and power becomes its own excuse. Thus statesmen ranging from Cicero to Hitler argued that extralegal repression required no higher moral authority than its self-serving function to protect the state. We see a similar mentality in the West's dispersal of aid to Africa. The continent is seen as in a state of perpetual crisis, with development as its own justification. Human rights, democracy and accountability take the back seat because aid is seen as the only moral imperative. This is particularly marked in countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda, where the recipient governments have easily exploitable 'guilt points' they use to guarantee continued aid shipments.

The inequity of this mindset is obvious. Ethiopia continues to receive development and humanitarian aid from both Britain and the USA despite its human rights violations, while nearby Uganda has had sanctions placed on it for its stringent anti-LGBTQ laws. How can one argue that one country is deserving of aid, while the other, similarly impoverished nation, is not? The answer is that the West sees itself as owing something to the Ethiopian people and thus aid, no matter how abused or misdirected it is, has become its own justification.