Rafik Hariri, who was killed by unknown assailants as he drove in his motorcade through Beirut on February 14, age 60, was a man who got things done, but who neither let his pragmatism nor the power of office get the better of him. Thus, while he was progressing on his path as leader on the Lebanese political and socio-economic scene, he grew with his experiences and many times surprised both his admirers and detractors. What was to be his greatest battle in the completion of Lebanese sovereignty ultimately cost him his life, because his enemies, unable to beat him on a level playing field, descended to the lowest and most heinous means to see him off.
It is as challenging to do justice to the work of Rafik Hariri in his 40-year career as entrepreneur and political mover and shaker, as it is to account for his philanthropic achievements and personal contributions in shaping the prospects of Lebanese fortunes through his life and ultimately, his death. Between his birth in Saida on November 1, 1944 as the son of a pious but humble grocer, his brief stint as an accountancy student at Arab University in Beirut that he had to break off after one year due to lack of money, his initial employment in Saudi Arabia as private tutor and accountant, and his stellar career of building a business empire worth $4 billion, becoming the father of Lebanon’s reconstruction and ultimately the nation’s foremost statesman, lie a multitude of massive leaps of professional development and astonishing, if not downright mysterious, achievement.
His early career, from his emigration in 1965 to his first big construction project in 1977, is especially opaque. More speculations than evidence has been used in trying to figure out some of the factors that would have help him in the tremendous and very fast advance from an expatriate job starter with a partial diploma to being a supremely successful contractor. After all, it is not only uncommon that a young accountant, however efficient, would be able to amass enough capital to start a company yet alone do so in – in ownership terms – introspect Saudi Arabia and, with his new firm, Siconest, immediately win a bid for a major contract.
This project, with which Hariri made his name, was for building the Massara Hotel in the resort city of Taif in preparation for a 1977 regional summit. As hosts of the summit, the rulers of Saudi Arabia considered it crucial for the kingdom’s image that this hotel was fully completed in the only six months available for construction. Hariri won the contract and delivered the project on deadline. While more daring explanations for the sources of his funding and the reasons behind him being awarded his great chance have been suggested but could not be substantiated, it seems safe to assume that personal trust played a key role.
No one doubts he took this opportunity and from that moment on, the story becomes more transparent. Hariri himself explained the cornerstone of his business success in telling a reporter many years later that in executing the 500 million Riyal hotel project, his company had a choice of making a big immediate profit of 200 million Riyals by working like everybody else or being content with a profit of 50 million by emphasizing best quality. In choosing the latter, he established his reputation and cemented the foundation for his business empire that grew soon internationally, into France, and from the 90s included construction, real estate, telecommunications, media, banking, insurance and other investments. The crowning symbol of the new tycoon’s favor with the Saudi ruling family came in the granting of citizenship in 1978.
Hariri’s first public forays back into Lebanon were characterized by charitable contributions to his hometown, Saida, and nearby communities. He once stated that he put half of his wealth in the late 70s into these projects, involving schools, hospitals and the Hariri Foundation dedicated to provide deserving Lebanese students with education grants and to preserving the national heritage. A big part of that original contribution, however, was lost in the fighting of 1982, when in course of the Israeli invasion, about $150 million worth of investment in a huge educational and health complex in Kfarfalous near Saida were wiped out.
Not long thereafter, Hariri turned his attention to politics. In so doing, he arrived on the Lebanese political scene when his nation was at its most needy. In fact, one can say that he did so more than once. If Lebanon had an overabundance of anything in the third quarter of the 20th century, it was national emergencies and it is the tragedy of Rafik Hariri’s life that the nation which he wanted to see prosper was beleaguered from the outside by circumstances, internally marred by indecisiveness, deathly rivalries in the political class, and lack of unity between great national hopes and the petty pursuit of narrow interests.
In the 1980s, Hariri made his political entrance not so much as high-profile front stage actor but as an emissary and intermediary with support from his patron, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd. On May 17, 1983, he was instrumental in relating the revocation document of the problematic peace agreement between Christian Lebanon and Israel to Syrian vice-president Abdel-Khamid Khaddam, who became a life-long friend. Hariri then worked with the 1983 Geneva and 1984 Lausanne rounds of negotiations to end the war and in 1989, he was the key facilitator in bringing a sufficient quorum of Lebanese parliament members to the table in Taif, scene of his first business triumph, which resulted finally in the settlement of the 16-year violent Lebanese conflict. (Whether, and how much, payments to participants at Taif it actually took to have all concede to the agreement was, even 14 years later, not a matter that Hariri aides would discuss.
From this still relatively obscure function he was cast into the central position in Lebanese politics in October of 1992. This was another dire hour. The Lebanese economy was in dismay and the currency in a tailspin. Although subsequent measures by the central bank and other factors played important roles, Hariri’s appointment as prime minister was key in re-instilling confidence in the Lira and reversing its slide. In the next six years, he made the politics of reconstruction his guiding line, pushing it forward in a style that, in the eyes of many observers, cast him more as an entrepreneur than a politician.
In terms of leadership performance, two factors stand out: the hands-on decision making, evident in the Hariri team’s tight grip on the key portfolios from finance to telecommunications, and the triangular squabbling over major decisions. Over the course of three cabinets, disputes between the prime minister, the speaker of the house, and the president defined the first Hariri premiership, which concluded with the presidential elections of 1998.
For Hariri, this period of political responsibility came to an end with a rather low blow, when he was essentially coerced into refusing the premiership under newly elected president Emile Lahoud. After the initial shock of a government without Hariri wore off and the Lira appeared resilient, the popular mood shifted and the country began to wonder if the Hariri era had drawn to a close.
This new and much more critical approach to the role and person of Rafik Hariri found a nourishing ground in the country’s recession, which began 1998 and roared ferociously till 2002. As the Lebanese reeled under a ballooning national debt, Hariri was made widely responsible for the escalation of the deficit and blamed just as much for every conceivable problem as energetically as he had been praised and burdened by expectation at the beginning of his regnum.
Yet, despite the blame, Hariri surprised everyone by winning a sweeping victory in the 2000 parliamentary elections. His popularity was so convincing and the alternative candidates so disenchanting, that he emerged from the ballot as the only possible choice for the premiership. In his fourth and fifth cabinet, the popularly empowered Hariri then showed that he had not only sat in opposition for two years, he had evolved his leadership style.
His cabinets now were no longer divided as they had been, with the important portfolios under his control and peripheral ones thrown as bones to shady militia types or those rewarded by Syrian patronage. As prime minister in the new millennium, Hariri appeared a better listener, less personally dominant and more political than when he had been the sole reconstruction mover in his previous terms.
But while ministries were at least making some visible efforts towards administrative efficiency, the fundamental situation of disputes at the top did not abate. They mere changed from three-way to two-way disagreements. These perennial rows between prime minister and the president followed a depressingly regular pattern, week in week out, from one year to the next and must be seen as cause of many delays and derailments of important decisions and caused many of the prime minister’s initiatives to grind to a halt. Finally, when confronted with intense pressure to agree to a non-constitutional procedure that would see an extension of president Emile Lahoud’s mandate, Hariri at first succumbed to the Syrian-backed demand and then stepped aside, walking into the sunset for the second time in his political career.
The difficulties of his position had certainly been taxing. When appearing on a global forum at the September 13, 2004, UN Habitat conference in Barcelona to receive a special “Habitat Scroll of Honor Award” citation for his ”outstanding and visionary leadership in the post-conflict reconstruction of Lebanon”, Hariri bared his feelings in what came to be one of his last speeches.
“Allow me to thank all my family, especially my wife Nazek, for sharing with me this happy occasion after living the difficulties, the challenges and the sacrifice during these long years of official and public life,” he said. “My family’s support and encouragement, and, most importantly, their constant love contributed greatly to my perseverance in my work, even when I felt frustrated in the face of what some people considered impossible.”
However, he was not immune to mistakes, either his own or those of his advisors, and perhaps it is unfortunate that he entered the corridors of power without having fully cut his political teeth. In comparing the ambition of the Lebanese reconstruction with the real accomplishments, Hariri conceded in Barcelona, “in saying that we succeeded [in the primary reconstruction goals] does not mean that our mission is complete. We still have to do a lot to make development as balanced as it should be.”
Some would say that the all-encompassing reconstruction goals laid out in Hariri’s program, such as renewal of confidence in the Lebanese democratic process and rebuilding of the Lebanese state and all its civilian and military institutions, were indeed unattainable in his time and that their author had too much optimism in the future. But the mammoth ambitions showed that this man was equipped with one essential quality that has proven decisive for leaders in the troubled pre-millennial epoch: he had vision.
In this capability to maintain a vision while living with the trappings of power, Rafik Hariri displayed the same type of alert sense of seizing the opportunities afforded by his time, in the same way that leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl did. But while they had the good fortune to see their visions become reality by ending the Cold War and reunifying Germany respectively, fate denied Hariri realizing his dream of a sovereign, united, prosperous Lebanese nation standing on foundation of regional peace.
Some of the errors in the Hariri years were certainly unsettling, and his era bore moments when his resolve seemed to waver. But it was always inconceivable, at least to this writer, that Rafik Hariri would have sought political office in Lebanon and accepted the burdens and tremendous personal risks of the premiership, for power or personal financial gain.
He was an example for the fact that it is in the human design of every strong man and woman to want to leave something of lasting value behind, be it through their family, their works, or their thoughts. Hariri knew that on a national level, the most valuable legacy an individual can create is that of patriotic achievements. After he had resigned from office the last time, he was still ready to continue working on completing Lebanon’s sovereignty with the astonishing and unquenchable vigor that was his. His proven ability to resurge and develop anew after each setback suggests that he would have played an outstanding role in a freely elected parliament and government after untainted 2005 elections.
In Barcelona, Mr. Hariri concluded his speech with the words, “Peace is our fate. Let us work together on achieving this fate. Let us always work for peace.” He left this legacy to his family and the whole country. After his assassination, it is up to the people of Lebanon to carry that light.
Thomas Schellen is the co-author of Hariri – A Phenomenon.
