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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... learned his business by farming with his father in Aus- tralia . He and Judi had spent several years in Somalia working for an Australian development company that had World Bank funding ; they had only recently moved to Mogadishu from a ...
... learned from a reliable source that a certain minister , hearing about the planned reception , had gone to Siad Barre and told him that Cohen was planning to organize an American political movement among Somalis and was about to call an ...
... learned some les- sons . Above all , we have finally learned that , in general , small is beautiful— or , better said , more likely to succeed . The days of building big dams and of grandiose projects that functioned only as long as ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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