Safirka: An American EnvoyKent State University Press, 2000 - 241 pages Peter S. Bridges's service as an American ambassador to Somalia capped his three decades as a career officer in the American Foreign Service. Safirka, a frank description of his experiences in Somalia and elsewhere, offers pointed assessments of American foreign policy and policymakers. Bridges recounts his service in Panama during a time of turmoil over the Canal; in Moscow during the Cuban missile crisis; in Prague for bleak years after the Soviet invasion; in Rome when Italian terrorists first began to target Americans; and in key positions in three Washington agencies. In Somalia Bridges managed the largest American aid program in sub-Sahara Africa. He dealt with a postcolonial regime, hobbled both by traditional clan rivalries and by a leader who cared far less about Somalia's people and progress than about maintaining his control over that poverty-stricken, strategic - which soon erupted in civil war. |
From inside the book
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... Africans should presumably have been taking the lead in opposing South Africa's apartheid regime , in late 1984 the South African press revealed ( after what looked like a deliberate leak from Pretoria ) that South Africa's foreign ...
... Africa - not just the Horn of Africa but most of the continent — under the guise of developmental aid resulted in absolutely no development . John Updike's bitter and funny 1978 novel The Coup con- tains much truth about the contest ...
... Africa has to some extent been contained within borders , but the recent horrific events in Rwanda and what was Zaire make clear that such borders may not stand . In Africa , as elsewhere , the basic nature of conflict is sometimes ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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