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 58
... Ethiopia , and the invaders had included not only divisions from Italy but six thousand Somali troops and many more Italian - trained Somali irregulars . There was no love lost between Somalis and Ethiopians , and Ethiopia was ...
... Ethiopia , whose large units of troops and tanks along the border were a serious threat . Ethiopia , in addition , was giving close combat support to units of Somali dissidents that were periodically coming over the border , probing ...
... Ethiopia , col- lecting previously unreported species of birds , reptiles , and insects . 1897 The British agree to give up to Ethiopia a British claim to sixty- seven thousand square miles of the Haud and Ogaden grasslands inhabited by ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
13 other sections not shown