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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... hundred yards parallel to the shore , then making a right - angle turn and continuing two hundred yards in toward shore . On the inner side of this gamma - shaped breakwater ran the concrete quay , and it was this that was crumbling and ...
... hundred feet above the surrounding plain ; this was Buur Eibi . It was a place of pilgrimage ; just as some Somalis went on the bajj to Mecca , so others came here to walk up Buur Eibi , a custom perhaps dating to pre - Islamic times ...
... hundred feet long , it was painted white and had a top speed of a dozen knots . Wanzor and his officers and crew were not navy but civil service ; there was also a navy unit , headed by Lt.Cdr . Robert Booker , that did the ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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