The only time Secretary Blinken cannot keep staring you in the eye is when you mention genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against the Amhara* people. When you mention atrocities against Amhara civilians that US embassy staff and other US civilian, military and intelligence personnel in Ethiopia document daily, Blinken starts blinking. He cannot stare you straight in the eye.
That was said about him a long while ago. That was when Meaza Mohammed, now internationally celebrated journalist and White House March 8 Award recipient, used to be persecuted and ostracized for voicing her concern over the Amhara genocide. Then only half a million Amhara were displaced and only thousands were killed. Since then, just the number of Amhara IDPs not accounted for has exceeded 2 million and entire regions have been cleansed of ethnic Amhara. I am wondering if Secretary Blinken is still the same way. I am wondering if Blinken is still blinking when the victims of state-sponsored genocide are Amhara civilians.
Would Blinken’s visit to Addis Ababa be to re-anoint Abiy Ahmed as US puppet supreme in the Horn or would Blinken be able to use the historic opportunity to exert the influence of his office for the observation of the human rights of all Ethiopian citizens and an end to persecution based on ethnicity and faith? Would Blinken choose to get dumped in the trash bin of history in the footsteps of Herman Cohen and the like or would he be able to do something that would redeem erroneous and tragic US involvement in the disintegration of Ethiopia?
The next time Blinken visits Addis Ababa will be probably after the Grand Ethiopian Genocide and the concomitant destruction of Addis Ababa; unless something drastic is done to reverse the course of this 30 year journey of doom that the US State Department and other partners put the Ethiopian nation on.
*The genocide against the Amhara started long before the PP-TPLF war in Tigray, continued during the war and even after the US sponsored PP-TPLF Pretoria deal ‘stopped’ the war.