The story highlights the rigors of international aid work, revealing the very real dangers that greet aid workers.

Moreover, the Chechnya situation highlights the problems with political restructuring. Although the first several sections of the book focuses more exclusively on the character of Cuny himself and not necessarily on Chechnya, Anderson already begins to hint at the political underpinnings and motives for his book. Anderson is showing how humanitarian conflicts brew continually worldwide as geo-political boundaries are artificially drawn around nationalism rather than ethnic integrity. The situation in Chechnya continues to be tense, well over a decade after the disappearance of Cuny and his colleagues. Similar conflicts, such as that of the Kurds, also demand sensitive yet conscientious aid.

Scott Anderson, and especially Fred Cuny, understands the importance of humanitarian engineering as an ethical imperative. Communities of marginalized and oppressed people continue to succumb to international pressure and the dictates...
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