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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... Somali friends in Mogadishu were Andrew and Judi Macpherson , an Australian couple . Macpherson was a dry - country agri- culturalist who had learned his business by farming with his father in Aus- tralia . He and Judi had spent several ...
... Somali ) . In the first years of inde- pendence , a young Somali entering the national university or going to Italy for a higher education , as a number of Somalis then did , was likely to be well prepared in the Italian language ...
... Somali watchman or two armed with clubs . My watchmen included my ancient Yemeni friend mentioned earlier , who was more likely to get his head cracked than to crack others ' . Nor was I exactly unknown in town . That fact had been ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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