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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... turned still closer to Moscow . By the 1970s there were at least three thousand Soviet military and civilian advisers in Somalia , and the Soviets were building major military bases there . The Soviets were then also building up their ...
... turned out to be a pleasant , bearded man named Les La Bar , from the state of Wash- ington ; in any case , La Bar said he would be happy to take us eastward . The next morning he did so , together with his paid passenger , a British ...
... turned strongly against the foreign troop presence in Mogadishu . Habr Gedr clansmen who had not been supporting Aydid now turned to him . In October 1993 at least eighteen Americans were killed in a Mogadishu firefight , and a dead ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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