War Games: The Story of Aid and War in Modern Times

ISBN-10: 0670918962
ISBN-13: 9780670918966
Series: War Games
Pages: 218
Language: English
Published: 2010
Publisher: Viking
Author: Linda Polman

Description

From Rwanda to Afghanistan, from Sudan to Iraq, this brilliantly written and at times blackly funny work of reportage shows how the humanitarian aid industry, the media and warmongers the world over are locked in a cycle of mutual support.

Drawing on her decades of first-hand experience, Linda Polman's gripping narrative introduces us to the key players in this twisted game, to the aid-workers and the warlords themselves. Among many others, there is the Bible-bashing one-man NGO who rescued two Sierra Leonean girls from life in an amputee camp - only to change his mind and try to send them back again; the director of the World Bank in Kabul who estimates that 35 - 40 per cent of all aid in Afghanistan is looted or lost; and the rebel soldier who explains that war does not mean fighting- 'W.A.R. means Waste All Resources. Destroy everything. Then you people will come and fix it.'

War Gamesis a controversial exposé from the front lines of the humanitarian aid industry by one of the most intrepid and brilliantly incisive journalists of our times.

'War Games is a blood-boilingly good polemic that should knock a few halos off.' Aminatta Forna in The Sunday Telegraph

'Pacy, concise, vivid . . . the pages of this necessary but contentious book burn with a righteous moral anger about the contradictions and tensions of delivering humanitarian aid in conflict zones.' The Daily Telegraph

'Marvellous... cool, brusque, fearless and disillusioned . . . carries echoes of the African writings of Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.' The Guardian

'Highly topical...essential reading...she relentlessly catalogues the ways in which humanitarianism has helped prolong war and suffering...if Polman's book can serve as a rallying cry to more radical, redistributive alternatives, then it will have more than fulfilled its function' The Times

'Linda Polman is one of the finest reporting journalists of the modern age - she is gutsy, intellectually penetrating and far from naiive.' The Evening Standard

'Linda Polman's devastating, first-hand account exposes the bitter farce of the aid business ...... in which western aid has been mercilessly manipulated by warlords... Polman is a Dutch reporter of conspicuous courage' Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times

'Against the grain ...... Polman presents a withering catalogue of corruption, incompetence and an aid industry that lives in unholy symbiosis with politicians and the military ...... Justified anger, this is an exhilarating book' Jonathan Fella, The Scotsman

'The best thing that can happen is that people realise that aid as it is given can be improved' Andrew Anthony, The Observer

'With devastating simplicity ...... reading War Gamesis like having your own contemporary road-to-Damascus moment; why didn't I know this?' Paul Whitehead, Book Geeks

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