Arafat, Bougainvillea, Prabhakaran and all
Of the many things that the Liberation Tigers tried to accomplish in the manner of the PLO, one was to try and wangle an address to the United Nations. Another was to hold an internationally attended press conference, and metamorphose Velupillai Prabhakaran into a Yasser Arafat strutting the world stage.

Both efforts ended up in subliminal failure. Some will say that it takes tact and finesse to be a successful international terrorist -- for that was what many called Arafat: a 'terrorist.' But this 'terrorist' ended up winning the Nobel peace prize. At least that's something that Velupillai Prabhakaran will not even pretend to aspire to.

Comparisons between Prabhakaran and Arafat, world-watchers would say, are entirely misplaced. Arafat was a Cold War warrior. Now he leaves behind Fidel Castro as the only Cold War warrior surviving. But Arafat though a successful internationalist, a Nobel Prize winner and all of that, was still somebody whom the West was in denial of.

There was a good deal of testimony to this when the funeral proceedings for Arafat were telecast. The 'take' on Arafat was so contrived that it bordered on the hilarious. Said Christiana Amanpour, the Chief International Correspondent of CNN, that the 'human moment' of the funeral ceremony was when Arafat's nine year old daughter was ushered in to pay her respects to the father. "She was obviously crying,'' said the CNN commentator, "and it was the human moment of the days events.''

The edge in her voice conveyed things perfectly. It seemed clear that she thought Arafat and anything that was associated with the man was not really human - - it can't be, the West doesn't quite accept Arafat to be human, though it would be grudgingly accepted that he is a freedom fighter and a bit of revolutionary of course.

It left us all wondering whether the same would have been said by commentators when Princess Diana died. "Prince William cried, it was the human moment of the funeral.'' etc., etc. etc?

No, in the case of Diana, the grief of the Princes was all part of the collective tapestry of the proceedings, not just a "human moment'' to be parcelled away and separately showed-off. And of course the whole show of grief at the death of Diana was utterly human - -whereas there was nothing 'human' about the tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered to mourn the passing of their dear leader, according to CNN's correspondent.

So, though Arafat was never really considered a human being in the Western scheme, at various times he was considered a useful instrument, or a necessary partner - - and of course that was when he was not being considered an 'obstacle'' or a general nuisance.

But Prabhakaran and Arafat have both had the accusation flung at them that they allowed themselves to be 'used' by the Western powers (Americans mostly of course) and sometimes they have both been accused of being pawns too. Arafat was said to have allowed himself to be "corrupted'' by Western influence, and Western money, so that he could be used as a buffer and protection against the hardline Hamas. Prabhakaran of course is accused of gathering Western sympathy and using Western refuge manipulatively, and then becoming a nuisance to his own patrons by becoming a bad boy, gun-running and what not in Western capitals.

Now that Arafat is gone, the refrain is that the Palestinians, goaded and coaxed by the West of course if you were to listen to CNN, will turn to democracy and breathe the refreshing and nippy air of freedom after all.

What's being said of course when you deconstruct that, is that the last semblance of resistance to the American-Israeli design is gone. True, Arafat was a buffer against the Hamas, but Arafat also was his own man, and without him the West figures that they can walk all over the Palestinians, make them accept anything that's doled out, and in that way make radical armed groups such as the Hamas utterly irrelevant.

In other words, of course, the reading of events after Arafat's passing is that Arafat was in many ways the cause himself. With Arafat gone, the Americans feel that there is the off-chance at least that the whole Palestinian problem can be made to disappear -- like some 100,000 Iraqi civilians were made to disappear without a whimper from the rest of the world.

So, the Americans know what conflict-end scenarios are. Ditto also, the other Western powers. Now they feel that the Palestinian imbroglio may be at and end, so the only thing left to do is to install 'democracy'' and get a puppet or a puppet-like government to endorse a package for the liberation of the Palestinian people.

In the case of Sri Lanka, Prabhakaran is still in the picture, but the West has figured that the armed phase of the conflict is somehow at and end here. Good evidence of this is that the West is encouraging the Bougainvillea type of conflict resolution process in the North East.

In Bougainvillea, it was felt that what really brought about the so-called resolution was not Australian Prime Minister John Howard's intervention, but that the Bougainvillea rebels in the copper mining areas of Papua New Guinea were exhausted and had reached the fag-end of their struggle.

For various reasons including the so-called war on terror the Americans and the proxy Western powers such as Norway now agree that the violent phase of Sri Lanka's conflict has got to be over. But regarding the conflict's symbol, they feel that without Prabhakaran the conflict itself will become a spent cause, and disappear once Prabhakaran is gone.

So there is a touch of difference it seems with the way the West handles Prabhakaran and Palestine. First of all of course everyone has to consider that Arafat is a giant, a Cold War warrior, and that the Palestinian cause is one hundred times bigger than the cause of the LTTE. But even having considered all of that, the Americans feel that Arafat has to be buried and out of the way, to wrap up a 'reasonable" solution, and then to package it, fix a ribbon and a rosette, and deliver it to the Palestinian people.

Here, it seems to be quite the reverse. The feeling is that if Prabhakaran is gone, the conflict itself and not just the armed aspect of the conflict will disappear because Prabhakran is almost more than symbolically the 'cause' itself. With Arafat's passing, they are sure that the armed aspect of the conflict can be relegated to the past, but there is no hope that the Palestinians can be given nothing (which is what the Americans and Israelis will ideally like to do.)

Here it's the reverse. Having sponsored the conflict the West fears that if Prabhakaran is out of the picture, not just the armed aspect of the conflict, but the 'cause'' and therefore any 'solution'' itself will be forgotten. So having figured that out, they are rallying Prabhakran to participate in some kind of solution soon, like in Bougainvillea -- though they do not consider him even as grudgingly as they did Arafat, as an actor on the world stage. Sooner or later, they hope the plot will proceed as planned.

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