Lewis Lucke was called out of retirement in 2010 to coordinate USAID’s response to the disastrous 7.0 magnitude Haitian earthquake,…
About ADST
Founded in 1986, ADST is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that has conducted and posted over 2,500 transcripts of oral history…
Witness to the Start of Sri Lanka’s Brutal Civil War
The Sri Lankan Civil War was one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent times, claiming the lives of nearly 100,000…
Death Squads in El Salvador, the Taliban in Afghanistan: a Diplomat’s Challenges
American Foreign Service Officer Todd Greentree served in El Salvador from 1981-82, a time when violence from local “death squads”…
The Impact of China’s Tiananmen Square Massacre in Taiwan and on the Mainland
Hong Kong-born U.S. Foreign Service Officer Edward Loo migrated to the United States as an infant, and went on to…
The collapse of Zaire at the end of the First Congo War 1997
In the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, ethnic Hutu refugees — including génocidaires — who had crossed into East Zaire to escape persecution from the new Tutsi government carried out attacks against ethnic Tutsis from both Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Rwandan refugees. The Zairian government was unable to control the ethnic Hutu marauders, and indeed lent them some support as allies against the new, Tutsi-led Rwandan government. In response, the Tutsis in Zaire joined a revolutionary coalition headed by Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila’s aim was to overthrow Zaire’s one-party authoritarian government run by Mobutu Sese Seko since 1965. With Kabila’s forces on the march, Zaire was soon engulfed in conflict. These hostilities, which took place from 1996-1997, are known as the “First Congo War” and lead to the creation of Zaire’s successor state The Democratic Republic of Congo. The United States, who had supported Mobutu until the end of the Cold War, recognized how potentially dangerous the situation was as Kabila gained control of most of the country and advanced rapidly towards the capital city of Kinshasa. In 1997, the United States sent a small group of diplomats to broker negotiations and attempt to come to a peaceful agreement between Mobutu and Kabila.
Harriet Elam-Thomas: A Career Well Served
Harriet Elam-Thomas grew up in Boston, the youngest of five children. She graduated from Simmons College and later earned a…
Raymond Hare: Our Man in Cairo during WWII
Egypt and the Suez Canal became a point of global strategic interest during WWII because of the quick access the…
Edward Elson: Entrepreneurial Ambassador to Denmark
The fall of the Soviet Union upset long-established power dynamics, leaving East and Central Europe, in particular, in uncharted waters.…
The Afghan Revolution of 1978: Invitation to Invasion
Afghanistan has had a long history of living under foreign rule. Once a protectorate of the British Empire, Afghanistan became fully independent…