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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... never liked the term , which implied that an ambassador was team captain but not really much above the other members . That was not what international law said . Mem- bers of an ambassador's staff , no matter how grand their diplomatic ...
... never went to sea , and a fertilizer plant that never produced a bag of fertilizer . A former Somali minister testified later in Italy that 10 percent of the money had gone into the pockets of Siad Barre's family and cronies.4 In 1985 ...
... never reached the world press . My informed guess was that some hundreds of Somalis were still dying each year in tribal fights , quite aside from skirmishes between the Ethiopian and Somali armies or between the Somali army and Somali ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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