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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... Returning , we noticed that traffic had been stopped along the wide boulevard the U.S. embassy faces . A mob had ... returned to Moscow in 1976 as ambassador ) , agreed with my draft , Ambassador Foy Kohler signed it , and off it ...
... returned , my wife and children were full of stories . They had almost slid off a cliff on a muddy mountain road ; they had collided ( " slightly ” said 1. Published by Ponte alle Grazie srl , Milano . David , Elizabeth , Peter , Andrew ...
... returned briefly to Mogadishu in 1988 , things were turning more and more wrong . Two well - known scholars in America had already warned , the previous year , that a potentially catastrophic civil war was brewing in Somalia . ' The ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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