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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... living room . Glass doors at the rear of the living room opened onto a large , roofed patio . At the front of the living room was an open porch , from which a dozen steps descended to a small garden . Beyond the garden was a high wall ...
... living in his sumptuous Mogadishu villa , where , as I remembered well , he had twice entertained my wife and me . Samantar had no reason to believe that the new group of Mogadishu leaders would see him as anything but Siad's man , and ...
... living there in rough , round shelters , living on flour , oil , and beans supplied by the World Food Program and trucked in by CARE from a warehouse at Berbera . Most of these people were not ethnic Somalis but Oromos , mem- bers of ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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