A career Foreign Service officer, Peter
Bridges served the United States in Panama, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union, and Italy
before becoming, in his final assignment, ambassador to Somalia. (The book’s title is
Somali for “ambassador.”) Like most memoirists, naturally enough, he seeks to
portray himself as reasonable and competent. Bridges is particularly convincing in this
effort. Among other things, he turned himself into something of a scholar of Somali
history and culture; he demonstrates a familiarity with a far-flung literature here, much
of it in Italian.
Bridges writes in the late 1990s about his tenure as ambassador from 1984 to 1986. Most
readers will be aware that Somalia, five years or so after his departure, plunged into an
abyss of civil war and famine from which it has yet to recover. Indeed, it is accurate to
say there is no such thing as Somalia, or at least a Somali state, anymore; rather, a
congeries of breakaway regional movements and warlord-driven zones. It is doubtless this
knowledge that gives Bridges’ narrative its sad and rueful tone, as he describes an
already bleak situation which would get only worse. Though Bridges candidly admits that
neither he nor anyone else predicted the extent of the tragedy, he records some apparent
premonitions. He quotes from his diary of the time: “. . . we were fortunate to serve
in Somalia now, because a decade from now was likely to be much worse.”
The world of the mid-1980s was, of course, a very different one. No U.S. ambassador,
certainly not one serving under Ronald Reagan, could avoid the constraints imposed by the
realities and perceptions of the Cold War. Somalia had been a virtual Soviet client,
allowing Soviet naval and military bases to be constructed in the 1970s, then abruptly
broke off the relationship and turned westward, presumably in hopes of defeating
arch-enemy Ethiopia, at that time a favorite of Moscow. Bridges writes of his wary
response to constant Somali aid requests, including military aid. Not much detail is
provided, but one wonders how much U.S. (as well as Soviet) military hardware wound up
fueling the internecine bloodshed of the 1990s.
It was also, apparently, a more innocent time for diplomats, hard as that may be to
believe. Bridges ran — alone — every morning along the streets and beaches of
Mogadishu. Though he occasionally worried about being targeted, especially after the
Libyans came to town, this did not prevent private seaside getaways with his wife, and so
on. Imagine his feelings when learning of the devastating 1998 bomb attacks on American
embassies in next-door Kenya and Tanzania.
Bridges had constant encounters with Somalia’s leader from 1969 to 1991, the late and
and unlamented Mohamed Siad Barre. The Somali dictator possessed few virtues, certainly no
redeeming ones; he was brutal, corrupt, and, given his Cold War flip-flops, unreliable in
the bargain. As the author notes, the pressures building in the thoroughly undemocratic
Siad Barre era can be considered the groundwork for the the disaster which ensued. To his
credit, Bridges quietly cultivated contacts with many other honorable Somalis, some of
whom perished in the civil war.
And to his credit as well, Bridges ends the book on a note of cautious optimism, even as
he states again some seemingly intractable realities — like the long-term ecological
crisis (overpopulation of humans and animals, deforestation, desertification) in the Horn
of Africa. In particular concerning foreign aid, he concludes that “we have finally
learned that, in general, small is beautiful — or, better said, more likely to
succeed.” The days of grandiose showcase projects (driven by the Cold War, he might
have added), he hopes, are over.
In all, this is an erudite and readable, even oddly charming, introduction to a very
unfortunate place. 
Kenneth P. Vickery is an African specialist who teaches
at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.