An American Analysis Market

Salameh Nematt     Al-Hayat     2003/07/31

It would be naive to assume that the Policy Analysis Market, which was designed to speculate on events in the Middle East and was declared closed by Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, only a few hours after it was launched, was just a passing idea. This project was being planned for several months by the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, as well as Net Exchange, a market technology company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, affiliated to the Economist. The website was supposed to be launched yesterday, allowing investors and speculators to register on the site and bet on such events as the assassination of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat or the toppling of Jordan's King Abdullah.

The Pentagon was obviously not expecting the White House or Congress, or any political American institution, to approve its project, since it would have allowed people to speculate on terrorist actions or possible destitutions, thus helping terrorists make big gains on the virtual market, by allowing them to place their bets on events they intend to carry out.

But why was the project announced in the first place, only to be cancelled so fast? We don't know. But it is no coincidence that its planners chose the murder of Arafat and the toppling of Jordan's King to indicate what could happen in the Middle East. And if the idea is to send a message of some sort or to stir a debate over a certain subject, it brings to mind the project of the neo-conservatives that was declared many years ago. That project calls for ending the Palestinian Authority by eliminating its representatives in order to create a Palestinian state on the ruins of the Hashemite Kingdom.

Whether that was the aim behind the Pentagon's program, or the issues that were used were only used by coincidence, it is important to remember that American institutions comprise a current allied with the Israeli right, which never ruled out the possibility of solving the Palestinian issue at the expense of Jordan. It is no secret that the Israeli prime minister champions the idea of deporting the Palestinians, and he has avoided on several occasions to declare the end of the "alternative nation" proposal, while a number of his ministers have declared their insistence on deporting hundreds thousands of Palestinians into Jordan, through the "transfer" plan, which would lead to undermining the Kingdom and paving the way to turning it into the "alternative nation" of the Palestinians.

It could be useful for Jordan and the Palestinian Authority to open an investigation into the Pentagon program, which was cancelled as soon as it was announced, as the only thing it did was to send a message about two potential events in Jordan and Palestine.

The past two years' developments have proven that it is unwise to ignore the messages originating from Washington. That is why the Saudi Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al Faisal, rushed to the American capital to deal with the implications of the congressional report issued about 9/11. His visit translated his awareness that it was too dangerous to leave matters to be manipulated by a few people to fit their own agenda. And for the same reason, the Syrian government should also work on confronting the campaign being led against it in Washington, instead of making accusations against the U.S. administration.