Polman’s War Games shows the complex interdependence that the humanitarian aid organizations, media, governments and warlords have with one another, and focuses for the majority of the time on what it actually “is” as opposed to how it “ought” to be. Though Polman says all of these units have to act together–the governments and humanitarian organizations in order to focus aid and use it in a similar manner instead of all acting separately (as she discusses in her interview with Jon Stewart)–it may be too much to ask. A majority of the problem faced in War Games is that people are not well-enough informed, which in turn can cause an influx of refugee warriors and an extension of wartime (as we saw between the Hutu and Tutsi in Goma), or too many organizations all taking different actions and a surplus of aid that cannot be tracked and is often stolen (for instance in the Dutch Flood Disaster where many MONGOS arrived as well as many useless donated aid items). I hate to be pessimistic when really these humanitarian aid organizations aim for good, but corruption exists on all levels and it will be hard to entangle because of the big players involved. It would take a lot of work and a lot of people working together, and its a flaw of human nature that we cannot all agree on what is best for the world because selfishness exists. We “ought” to work together, but many believe that they can always do better, work harder, send more money, etc and the chances that people will work together is unlikely, especially because no one can even keep tabs on how many aid organizations there actually are.

Humanitarian organizations rely on their beliefs that they are “remaining neutral” and rely on the media to attract worldwide attention for money, but the media also only shows a fraction of what is happening in these crisis areas, most of the time what is exaggerated by victims competing with one another for aid and warlords taking a majority of the aid that is being supplied. Victims compete with each other by accepting prosthetics but not using them, and even calling themselves “real victims” who got their limbs cut off “long sleeve or short sleeve” (cut at the wrist/forearm or below the shoulder) rather than amputated from a medical procedure from the war conflict (Polman). Governments themselves have to approve an aid organization to be present and deliver aid into their country, which is also corrupted by the governments laying down requirements for them to help those in need. People are using the media to create a postmodern view to change the reality that the world sees (Witt 108).

As part of the “War on Terror” United States aid organizations were expected to do “public relations for the US government…NGOs had to do a better job of linking their humanitarian assistance to US foreign policy and making it clear that they are ‘an arm of the US government'” (Polman 129). The connections these organizations are forced to have with governments when they are supposed to be independent causes a problem, Polman discusses in her chapter Afghaniscam, because people “…can no longer tell the difference between ‘real’, neutral humanitarians and reconstruction troops disguised as humanitarians” (Polman 131). When the military was present in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, they used the humanitarian aid organizations to further military goals,  known as a “force multiplier” (Lischer 99). Lischer has found that “humanitarian soldiers” are not able to create stability or meet the needs of victims because they are instead acting like government agents (Lischer 99).

The solution to the problems presented to us in War Games: work together. Further structural changes could help minimize some of the bad effects from the humanitarian aid business, but unfortunately, further corruption of the system is most likely inevitable.

Works Cited:

Lischer, Sarah Kenyon. “Military Intervention and the Humanitarian “Force Multiplier””JSTOR. Lynne Rienner Publishers, Jan. 2007. Web. 10 June 2013.

Polman, Linda. War Games. London: Penguin, 2010. Print.

Witt, Jon. The Big Picture: A Sociology Primer. 1st ed. New York: McGaw-Hill, 2007. Print.