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. |
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... built , and the navy was on the point of seeking bids from U.S. construction companies . Kismayu had an airport with a paved runway more than two miles long , built by an Italian construction firm in the 1960s . Next to the great long ...
... built by the United States in the 1960s , at the same time we built the quay . In contrast to the quay , it had been well built , and for some time it supplied the city with safe , filtered water from the nearby Juba River . But the ...
... built right on the point of land . We turned back and landed west of Alula at a little fish cannery that had been built by our AID in the 1960s and was now being renovated , with British aid funds , by a New Zealander then resi- dent in ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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