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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... assistance in the future ( though what the ambassador thought might , I realized , have little effect in Washington ) . I left CENTCOM to return to Washington know- ing that the question of Somalia's strategic importance was going to ...
... assistance to the national police stemmed from a major incident in October 1977. Palestinian terrorists hijacked a Lufthansa jet loaded with passengers and in the end made the pilot fly it to Mogadishu . Bonn had cut off official assistance ...
... assistance , just eight hundredths of I percent ( 0.08 percent ) of its gross national product . This is less than a quarter of the average contribution of industrialized countries . And only about a tenth of U.S. assistance goes to sub ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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