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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... asked to see more than passports . At the Austrian - German border , the Germans asked for the insurance card . I tried to explain . No use ; I had to buy a tem- porary red insurance card , and it was expensive . The Grenzpolizei guard ...
... asked where I could expect to go next . They told me I could probably become ambassador to some small country . I thought about that for a while and decided that I did not want to sit somewhere in West Africa with little to do but urge ...
... asked Washington if aerial or satellite photography could be used , to help get a more accurate count of people in the camps . We had also asked the U.S. Mission in Geneva to tell UNHCR headquarters that it was imperative that UNHCR ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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