Beirut's Great Mystery

By Scott Macleod/Beirut

The summons came down from Damascus last August, informing Rafiq Hariri, then the Prime Minister of Lebanon, that he was wanted for a meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad. For years Hariri had strived to maintain cordial relations with Lebanon's more powerful neighbor, acquiescing to Syria's domination of Lebanese politics as the price of Syria's role in ending Lebanon's 15-year civil war. But by last summer Assad suspected that Hariri was behind an international campaign to end Syria's occupation of Lebanon, and so he decided to warn Hariri not to oppose Syrian plans to reassert its influence. In an exchange Hariri later recounted to associates and friends interviewed by TIME, he protested, telling Assad, "I have been a friend of Syria for 20 years," to which Assad replied coldly, "I have only known you for four years." Then Assad issued what Hariri interpreted as a personal threat if he did not bow to Syrian wishes. "I will break Lebanon over your head," Assad said.

Those words would haunt Hariri for the rest of his life. Seven weeks after his meeting in Damascus, he resigned. Almost four months after that, he was dead, assassinated on Valentine's Day in rebuilt downtown Beirut, the jewel of his political achievements, as he prepared to launch a bid to reclaim power and rid Lebanon of Syrian influence. In death, Hariri managed to obtain the prize he so desperately sought in the final months of his life. After his assassination a million Lebanese poured into the streets, galvanizing international opinion against Damascus and forcing the withdrawal of Syrian troops and some of the intelligence operatives who had stifled Lebanese life for three decades. The Bush Administration has used the scenes of Lebanese citizens demanding independence and free elections as vindication of its push for democracy in the Arab world. This week 3 million Lebanese voters begin going to the polls to elect a government that the U.S. hopes will be the first in 29 years free of Syrian control. And in the saga's final, Shakespearean twist, it is Hariri's son Saad, 35, a political novice who briefly fled the country after Rafiq's death, who is favored to become the next Prime Minister.

And yet while Hariri is a martyr who transcends Lebanon's sectarian divides--his grave in downtown Beirut has become the city's most popular tourist attraction--the circumstances surrounding his assassination are still cloaked in mystery. The bombing site remains cordoned off by police tape, the street littered with the gnarled remains of cars burned by the blast. A U.N. fact-finding mission concluded in March that the Syrian regime bore "primary responsibility" for the political circumstances leading up to Hariri's assassination, though Damascus has denied any involvement. A U.N. team arrived in Lebanon at the end of May to begin a formal investigation, but it's unclear whether the probe will finger the perpetrators.

So who killed Rafiq Hariri? Barring a confession from the conspirators, the world may never know the full truth. But interviews with the participants in the drama reveal the immense pressure under which Hariri lived out his final months. His encounter with Assad last August set off a six-month showdown that pit Hariri against one of the most ruthless regimes in the Middle East, which had concluded it could no longer tolerate his defiance. In the end, that defiance may have cost Hariri his life. But it also gave his countrymen--and, perhaps, the region--a chance for a different future.

The August meeting in Damascus was a confrontation between two men with vastly different resumes, styles and visions. Hariri, 60 at the time of his death, was a gregarious, self-made billionaire with friends from Paris to the Persian Gulf. Assad, an ophthalmologist, now 39, had inherited the presidency after the death of his father Hafez in 2000. Hariri had tried to court the younger Assad, but by last summer the two men were on a collision course. First Assad ordered Hariri to support a change to Lebanon's constitution that would extend the tenure of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, 68, a former Lebanese general widely viewed as a Syrian puppet. Assad believed that Hariri was behind U.N. Resolution 1559, a measure sponsored last year by the U.S. and France demanding that Syria withdraw its remaining 14,000 troops from Lebanon. A well-placed Western diplomat says Hariri was the "main mover and shaker, the one who managed to forge the alliance between the U.S. and France that was behind the resolution. And the Syrians knew it." Perhaps counting on Hariri's history of placating Syria, Assad summoned Hariri to Damascus to send a message: Back down--or else.

Hariri returned to Lebanon shaken. A close friend says that when he visited Hariri at his weekend home outside Beirut, the Prime Minister recounted his humiliation. He sobbed on his friend's shoulder when they touched on the topic a few days later. "To them, we are all ants," Hariri told an aide. But after consulting with Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Hariri decided to back Syria's plan to extend Lahoud's term. On Sept. 3, the Lebanese parliament voted 96-29 to further Lahoud's term by three years.

But then Hariri's enemies went too far. On an October trip to France to meet with French President Jacques Chirac, Hariri received word of an assassination attempt on Marwan Hamade, a member of parliament who had voted against Lahoud. Hariri saw the attempted hit as a warning. Nineteen days later, he quit as Prime Minister, writing Lahoud, "I entrust revered Lebanon and its good people to God Almighty."

Hariri quickly began plotting a comeback, aiming to win a landslide victory for his Future Movement in Lebanon's 2005 parliamentary elections. "He concluded that he could not achieve anything with Bashar," Hamade, who is recovering from eight operations after surviving the attempt on his life, told TIME. Hariri worked secretly behind the scenes to forge a powerful alliance opposed to Lahoud and the Syrians. The so-called Bristol Gathering brought together Christian, Druze and Sunni leaders. "He was the pillar of the opposition," says Jumblatt. On Jan. 29, Hariri met with his two main political allies, Basil Fleihan, a Protestant who was his closest economic adviser, and Dr. Ghattas Khoury, a Maronite Christian surgeon. Says Khoury: "After that meeting, we were vocal about our opposition to the Syrians. Rafiq Hariri would not anymore go fifty-fifty with the Syrians." That's the message Hariri had just given Rustum Ghazali, the chief of Syrian intelligence in Lebanon. He rejected Ghazali's demand that pro-Syrian candidates be included on his electoral ticket. "I'm not going to work with people who stab me in the back," Hariri told colleagues.

Hariri's swelling defiance made him a target. He avoided the telephone, holding important conversations in secure sites like his garden or the bathroom. "He knew that there was a price in confronting Syria, but he was willing to pay it," says a former Hariri adviser. Hariri jokingly asked Jumblatt, "Who will be assassinated first, you or me?" Still, he shrugged off warnings that he might be killed, claiming to have U.S., French and Saudi assurances for his safety. On Feb. 10, Terje Roed-Larsen, the U.N. envoy overseeing Resolution 1559's implementation, met Assad in Damascus. According to people familiar with the conversation, Assad was preoccupied with Hariri's brazenness. "There is no opposition," Assad told Roed-Larsen, according to a Hariri aide. "There is only Rafiq Hariri." The next day, Roed-Larsen dined with Hariri in Beirut. Hariri informed Fleihan that Roed-Larsen had warned Hariri that his life might be in danger. Roed-Larsen encouraged Hariri to adopt a less confrontational approach. "You have to be very, very careful," he said.

On Feb. 14, Hariri left parliament at about 12:30 p.m. With Fleihan and Khoury, he walked across the street to the Cafe de l'Etoile. "He was confident about his decision to break with the Syrians," recalls a diplomat who chatted with him. "He said, 'I'm sick and tired of the sons of bitches.'" Dr. Khoury was beeped to perform an emergency operation at American University Hospital. Hariri got behind the wheel of his armor-plated Mercedes Benz, with Fleihan in the passenger seat, and drove toward his West Beirut mansion in a six-vehicle convoy. As they passed the seafront Hotel St. Georges, a Beirut landmark, an explosion caused by a 1,000-kg bomb turned the site into an inferno. Hariri's charred body was identified by a ring on his finger and a swatch of fabric from the necktie he had put on that morning, which had burned into his flesh. Fleihan died two months later in a French hospital.

If the attackers hoped to silence the anti-Syrian front that Hariri had built, they were disappointed just seven days later, when 150,000 people descended on Martyrs' Square in Beirut to mourn Hariri, wave Lebanese flags and demand Syria's withdrawal. The blast did, however, have a chilling effect on one group close to Hariri: his family. Days after their father's funeral, Hariri's four sons fled the country following a warning that they might be next. But as the Syrians began pulling out their troops, paving the way for elections, the Hariri clan grew concerned that without its leadership, the opposition could falter, jeopardizing Rafiq's legacy. "We gave our father's blood for this country," says Saad, formerly the CEO of the family's $3.8 billion construction empire. "But we realized that we had to continue his dream."

It won't be easy. Lebanon is chronically fractious, and the old civil-war rivals are already bickering over how to divvy up power with the Syrians gone. Nobody is talking yet about the most contentious issues facing the new parliament: how to disarm Hizballah, the militant Shi'ite group, and reconfigure the 1943 power-sharing agreement known as the National Pact. The task of uniting the country has fallen to Saad, a shy Georgetown University graduate who makes no secret that he would rather be scuba diving or riding his Harley. "Watch me," he told TIME in a recent interview at the wood-paneled fourth-floor office where his father used to hold court. "My father didn't want a political dynasty. What I would like to do is work in politics for three or four years, establish a real party and then just step down." But gradually he is warming to the role that fate has delivered him. When he appeared at a recent Beirut campaign rally, he practically had to be dragged out of his seat to read a speech to supporters. But at the end of the rally he leaped onto a chair to blow kisses to the well-wishers. "Saad! Saad! Saad!" the crowd chanted, as sure a sign as any that the torch has passed, from father to son. --With reporting by Nicholas Blanford and Romesh Ratnesar/Beirut, Bruce Crumley/Paris and Elaine Shannon/Washington

With reporting by Nicholas Blanford/Beirut, Romesh Ratnesar/Beirut, Bruce Crumley/Paris, Elaine Shannon/Washington