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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... looked on Boyd as a sort of protegé when the latter was minister . Now , though , with the flag - raising business , Harrington had ended the relationship . my The November 4 celebrations were to include a morning parade in the old ...
... looked like . I had over the years read a number of books on Somalia , and just recently I had devoured hundreds of pages of briefing papers . Unfortunately , neither the books nor the briefing papers had offered much in the way of ...
... looked into what had happened after the previous drought , in 1974–75 , when many Somali nomads had been resettled in fishing and farming com- munities . Of the fifteen thousand whom the authorities had tried to make into fishermen ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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