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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... building that had housed our offices since 1957 , before Somali indepen- dence , when we first opened a consulate at Mogadishu . John Blane , our ambassador to Rwanda , wrote me some months later that as vice consul at Mogadishu in 1957 ...
... buildings for the clinics and train Somalis to staff them . It had shipped to Somalia the prefabricated clinic ... building in a Somali town was totally out of the question - and so was this aid project . We terminated it , saving ...
... building a large military base in one of the most isolated places north of the equator . If the Italians could build the salt works , we could build a base . It was also true that once a base was built , we could hold it against anyone ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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