The part that focuses on Seeye Abraha (left) and Berhanu Nega were omitted from the cable that Yamamoto sent to Washington, DC after he met Getachew Assefa. But why? inquires journalist Eskinder Nega.

WikiLeaks posted the first two of more than 1300 leaked State Department cables on Ethiopia this week, triggering a new wave of blockades by ETC against proxies that circumvent filters against Ethiopian websites. (Despite their best effort, nonetheless, their “line of defense” is hardly impregnable.)

But if only half-heartedly, the Under Secretary, who travelled to Addis primarily to lobby in support of the Copenhagen accords, did raise other issues of keen local interest, and in the process, inadvertently highlighted not only the increasing assertiveness of Meles in his dealings with the world’s lone super power, but also the clear reluctance of the Obama administration to apply pressure on authoritarian regimes. “Birtukan will vegetate in prison forever,” Meles tells the Americans belligerently. And all Otero could muster in response was a pitiful “(urge to) exercise wise judgment and leadership, and CONSIDER the release of Birtukan Mideksa.” Emboldened, Meles then even goes to risk the mother of all revisionist histories. “Referencing his own struggle against the Derge regime," details the cable,” Meles said he and his compatriots received no foreign funding, but were willing to sacrifice and die for their cause.” The Americans, in line with their famed short attention spans, were in no position to debate about events two decades in the past. And suddenly, Meles assumes the moral high-ground. There was no stopping him after this.

All in all, Meles comes out the clear winner in this cable: strong, confident, and, most importantly, his private utterances fall in perfect sync with his public pronouncements. The Americans, on the other hand, fall far short of the traditional image of a superpower, sadly, not even that of a receding one. They allow Meles to bully, provoke and lecture them, all in almost meek silence. To all appearances, they stand powerless before him. (Interestingly, not a word about freedom of the press, the principal advocates of democracy until their suppression in 2005, but an argument of sorts over civil society, whose record on democratization in Ethiopia is at best minimal.)