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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... regime that excluded effective participation by other groups of clans , a regime that was not based on the strong democratic traditions of Somali pastoral society . It also became , as the years passed , an increasingly corrupt regime ...
... regime . Perhaps it was so ; many or most of them were Isaqs . In any case , they had been enjoying a tax - free regime at Berbera , and they profited from it ; so indeed did the country as a whole , which otherwise had little enough to ...
... regime was viewed . I knew that dissidents had invaded northwest Somalia from Ethiopia and that the So- mali armed forces had repelled them , as was their duty . However , as other Somali officials had confirmed to me , a number of ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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