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
Results 1-3 of 10
... Somali friends in Mogadishu were Andrew and Judi Macpherson , an Australian couple . Macpherson was a dry - country ... British had done less than the Italians . In British Somaliland , a year before the Somalis gained indepen- dence in ...
... British before the present century be- gan . By 1951 in British Somaliland , which had an area of about 110,000 square miles , there were at least four million sheep and goats and 1.2 million camels ; in contrast , at roughly the same ...
... British reach agreements with northern Somali clans , leading to formation of the British Somaliland Protectorate . 1889 Leaders from Obbia and Alula accept an Italian protectorate ; sub- sequently the influential Filonardi trading ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
13 other sections not shown