Over his 26 year career, Cuny worked in crises in more than fifty countries, including Biafra, Guatemala, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Bosnia, and Chechnya.
Disaster reliefs In 1970, when the
Bhola Cyclone struck
East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), Cuny was hired by the British
NGO Oxfam to serve as an advisor in East Pakistan. He later described this assignment as 'life-changing' because it was there that he was first 'immersed' in the international disaster relief system. Since Intertect, his consulting company, was wholly dependent on outside contracts, these entities often included the same people upon whom his livelihood depended. Oxfam called upon him again after the
earthquake near Managua, Nicaragua, in 1972. Oxfam asked him to plan a camp for the earthquake survivors; he used shelter units by forming a cluster around common spaces. Oxfam requested Cuny's assistance again with reconstruction after the
Guatemala earthquake in 1976. Oxfam and its partner NGO, World Neighbors, asked Cuny to conceptualize a strategy for housing reconstruction. He responded with an approach called "Programa Kuchuba'l". Instead of rushing in construction materials from outside the region, he used local materials. During the
1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia, Cuny conducted assessments of famine victims who had fled to Sudan from areas of Ethiopia that were affected by protracted drought, war and famine. They settled in camps around
Showak and in the
UN Food and Agriculture Organization camps in eastern Sudan. During this period, Cuny arranged to provide food to those who voluntarily repatriated in spite of opposition from the US government and UN representatives. In 1986, Cuny led an interagency assessment in Ethiopia that included the review of backup supplies and food availability. However, he extended the assessment to examine dependency problems. As the Soviet Union was beginning to
collapse, in 1992, Cuny and Intertect provided assessment and planning in Mongolia, and in areas of Georgia, North Ossetia, Ingushetia, Dagestan and Chechnya. In 1979, Cuny was contracted to advise on the
Kampuchean refugee camp in
Thailand. Cuny's
Assessment Manual for Refugee Emergencies informed USAID OFDA's set of guidelines; it is still in use as the Field Operations Guide. In 1991, the US military was called to provide humanitarian assistance but identified a problem of meeting the
Kurds' needs in the mountains. Cuny was brought in to advise the US State Department and the military. Cuny proposed setting up safe zones in Northern Iraq and convincing the Kurds to return. The concept required establishing a humanitarian vanguard in
Zakho, Iraq, still occupied by the Iraqi Army, and a series of demarches to the
Iraqi military to withdraw. The operation was credited with saving thousands of lives. Ambassador
Marc Grossman, Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in Turkey at the time, recounted his involvement with what was known as Operation Provide Comfort:Once we had established that safe zone in the north, just as Fred Cuny had predicted, 500,000 people went home. It was astonishing because plan B had been to set up nine or 10 massive refugee camps all along a valley in northern Iraq. Many people said that if that were the outcome, these would be the next Palestinians. Instead the Kurds went home.In response to a
developing famine in 1992 in Somalia, Cuny went to
Somalia to set up a food supply program. He developed a set of recommendations for keeping a safe distance from Somalia's political hot spots and especially to avoid operating within the capital,
Mogadishu. The plan was endorsed by former Ambassador
Morton Abramowitz; however, Cuny was excluded from further planning. In October 1993, the US forces maneuvered a raid against Aidid's top lieutenants, which resulted in
18 American servicemen being killed. When the
1986 El Salvador earthquake happened, the
United States Agency for International Development Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID OFDA) hired Cuny. In a plan devised in conjunction with then president Duarte an approach centered on the El Salvador government purchasing unused land and building housing. USAID OFDA subsequently requested Cuny's help again after the
1988 Armenian earthquake. He insisted that a higher priority for the plastic sheeting USAID had brought was to provide temporary shelter for people to be used instead for stabling animals.
Protection In
Kuwait, in anticipation of the end of the
Gulf War, Cuny was a member of an USAID OFDA team based in Kuwait that planned to go into
Iraq at the war's conclusion, providing protection for groups in Kuwait expected to be blamed for the Iraqi invasion, and for Kurdish populations in the north of Iraq. . The siege had cut off
Sarajevo's main supply of drinking water. Cuny and his team entailed custom-building several water filtration components in
Houston, Texas. Each component was the size of a shipping container; designed to be transported in a C-130 transport airplane. All the components were flown into Sarajevo. When the filtration system started working in the summer of 1994, approximately 250,000 residents gained access to water in their homes, saving countless lives by avoiding the need for exposure to snipers and mortar fire when collecting river water or at open air collection points. . Cuny also brought in a team to resolve a disruption of natural gas into Sarajevo. == Disappearance ==