Humanitarian Engineering the Man Who

Humanitarian Engineering

The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of an American Hero is war journalist Scott Anderson's account of the Fred CUNY story. CUNY has been profiled in multiple media sources, from PBS's Frontline to The New York Times. Therefore, Cuny's story is well-known and Anderson's account adds depth and richness to the extraordinary events. Having seen the PBS Frontline show, I was happy to encounter Anderson's account, which fills in many of the details that were not covered in the television program including a more in-depth portrait of the post-Cold War Chechen situation.

In the first three sections of The Man Who Tried to Save the World, Anderson introduces the reader to Cuny as a person, and explains Cuny's involvement in Chechnya. The first chapter is gripping: Anderson grabs the reader's attention with his punchy prose and sets the stage for a true story that reads like a fictional account of espionage. Cuny and three of his colleagues working on disaster relief in Chechnya disappeared in 1995. Two of Cuny's colleagues worked for the Red Cross, and one served as a translator. This was not Cuny's first assignment; he had been hired by NGOs to become engaged in humanitarian engineering programs before heading to Chechnya including stints in Iraq and Bosnia.

Anderson paints a vivid portrait of the man in the first several sections of the book. After all, The Man Who Tried to Save the World is essentially Cuny's biography. Cuny is a larger-than-life Texan who channeled his high-energy personality toward ambitious global humanitarian engineering programs. While Cuny worked within bureaucratic systems, he was known as a maverick who did things his own way. Cuny was, in a nutshell, very American and quintessentially Texan. Cut out for his work as if he was born into it, Cuny seemed an unlikely casualty of the Chechyn conflict. 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.