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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... villages were worse than I had expected , miserable settlements of log houses where the only handsome structures , the Orthodox churches , had long since been converted into warehouses . As I stood one day in a village street near ...
... village and the village spring . The grotto was like a natural room , forty feet across , open to the plain on its outer side , where the rock ceiling was perhaps twenty feet high . It was the traditional meeting place for the village ...
... village of Mait . Off the village , six dhows were moored in quiet water . At the edge of the village were two huge dhamas trees , and under the trees were many villagers asleep in the afternoon heat , covered with pink shawls ...
Contents
Scholar Soldier Someday Diplomat | 7 |
From Foggy Bottom to the Isthmus | 13 |
The Moscow Hand | 26 |
Copyright | |
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