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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... become the third of three deputy executive secretaries in the depart- ment's executive secretariat . This was an organization of not quite a hun- dred people located on the seventh floor near the offices of our top leaders -the ...
... become truly independent — whereas economically , at least , they were becoming ever more dependent on donor governments — we should put all possible effort into teaching them what they needed to know . That might be called simplistic ...
... become fishermen . I had , how- ever , looked into what had happened after the previous drought , in 1974–75 , when many Somali nomads had been resettled in fishing and farming com- munities . Of the fifteen thousand whom the ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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