Humanitarians in Hostile Territory: Expeditionary Diplomacy and Aid Outside the Green Zone

More than ever, humanitarian aid workers and diplomats are engaging with vulnerable populations in areas once considered too dangerous to touch. Drawing on decades of on-the-ground experience in conflict environments around the world, Van Arsdale and Smith offer this important and revealing guide to the ethics, theory, and practice of work outside so-called Green Zones of safety. On behalf of governments or NGOs, on missions ranging from complex humanitarian emergencies to post-war reconstruction, social scientists in interdisciplinary teams are operating in settings where the line between civilian and military projects is increasingly blurred. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the realities of these new humanitarianisms and for the fields of international relations, anthropology, development studies, and peace studies.

Peter W. Van Arsdale. Ph.D., is a senior lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver and a senior researcher with eCrossCulture Corporation. He has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Romania, Bosnia, Indonesia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Guyana, Peru, and El Salvador, and recently helped initiate a program in East Timor with Nobel Peace Laureate JosT Ramos-Horta. He is chair of the  Committee on Human Rights of the Society for Applied Anthropology and member of the Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association. Among his many publications in the field is Forced to Flee: Human Rights and Human Wrongs in Refugee Homelands (2006). Derrin R. Smith, Ph.D., is a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, working on terrorism finance and sanctions, trafficking in persons, Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons, and broader issues involving human rights, labor, and democracy. He holds degrees in technical management, finance, and international economics. His experience includes service as a diplomat and political action officer with PRT Anbar, Iraq, specializing in tribal outreach and development of the provincial governing council; as a diplomat and deputy chief of American Citizen Services in Guadalajara, Mexico, for the U.S. Department of State; and in Afghanistan contributing to studies on disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs. He also has been a corporate executive for high technology corporations, worked in investment banking, and taught on intelligence and international security at the University of Denver. He is a life member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers and an academic fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.