'An indispensible inquiry into our moral health and humanity.'
LSE Review of Books
The war on terror has politicised foreign aid as never before. Aid workers are being killed at an alarming rate and civilians in war-torn countries abandoned to their fate.
From the ravaged streets of Mogadishu to the unending struggle in Helmand, Peter Gill travels to some of the most conflict-stricken places on earth to reveal the true relationship between the aid business and Western security. While some agencies have clung to their neutrality against ever stiffer odds, others have compromised their impartiality to secure the flow of official funds.
In a world where the advance of Islamic State constitutes the gravest affront to humanitarian practice and principle the aid community has faced in decades, Gill poses the crucial question - can Western nations fight in a country and aid it at the same time?

Peter Gill is a journalist specialising in developing world affairs. He has been South Asia and Middle East correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and has travelled widely in Africa and Asia as a current affairs reporter for ITV, the BBC and Channel 4. He covered the fall of Saigon for the Daily Telegraph and made three documentary films on Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. He led major media campaigns to combat AIDS and leprosy in India for the BBC, and has written four books on development themes, including a study of Oxfam's early work and two books on the politics of hunger in Ethiopia.

Introduction: Humanitarian Armada
Part I: Front Lines
1. End of the White Saviour
2. Development at Gunpoint
3. Meetings with Remarkable Men
4. Taking a Bullet for Polio
5. Frontier Manoeuvres
6. Blue UN, Black UN
7. Delay Costs Lives
8. Acts of Faith
Part II: Home Fronts
9. With All Those Who Suffer
10. When Aid Becomes a Crime
11. Doing Well by Doing Good
12. The Police, Not the Stasi
13. Making Poverty History?
14. French Lessons
15. Running Out of Words
Conclusion: How Many Cheers for Neutrality?