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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... interest themselves in me , they would find me a good target . It was not a subject I brooded over . I did sometimes wish inwardly that the increased terrorist threat might reduce the flow of visitors to the embassy from Washington ...
... interest itself in this problem . It sent representatives to both Addis Ababa and Mogadishu to try to arrange an exchange or , short of that , ensure that the prisoners were being treated in accordance with the Geneva agreement of 1949 ...
... interest got published . The only good Somali nov- elist , Nuruddin Farah , had been in exile abroad for years , and Somali cen- sorship did its best to keep his antiregime works out of the country . Most of the published works on ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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