Adonis Diaries

Cut Out the Crap: Who Killed Rafiq Hariri?

In March 2005, I wrote in my diary my assessment of the potential assassins (States behind the killing) of Rafiq Hariri, and published it in September 2008 under the title “Cut Out the Crap: Who Killed Rafiq Hariri?”  It is a reasonable idea to re-edit this article, as the International Court for Lebanon has issued the individual names of the first batch of suspects.

During the Roman Empire, the legal system targeted “who had vested and vital interest in the elimination of a rival” and not just the hand that executed the order.  If we are serious in investigating the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, we must cut-out the crap and analyze the potential various political and group interests behind the decision, planning, financing, and execution of the assassination. I wrote: 

“If anyone is still waiting for the results of any kind of investigation into the assassination of Hariri, I suggest that he build himself a shack in Downtown Beirut and wait there for at least twenty years.

If anyone did not get it, that more than two great States, with veto power in the UN, are behind this assassination he better stocks up on Lebanese flags hoping to sell them for another big demonstration with the slogan of “We need the truth. Who killed our martyr Rafiq?” 

If anyone is still wondering why a thousand kilograms of TNT explosives are needed to assassinate Hariri, or who can stockpile that amount of explosives, then may be he sincerely wishes that Syria should be behind the assassination. 

If anyone is still interested on the mechanisms of this murder by a moving truck, or in a secret underground tunnel, or a suicide bomber, or the detonation technique used or any kind of these stupid details, then he sure will hear a lot of that crap…

Let me ask you, why Yasser Arafat, the symbol of the Palestinian resistance to Zionism, had to be assassinated, in the meanest possible alternatives, by slow poisoning?  Why even the meanest British government allowed Napoleon Bonaparte to dictate his memoirs before dying his slow death with arsenic poisoning?  Maybe if Arafat was serious about writing his “memoirs”, Sharon would have extended his life:  Wonderful juicy stories about rotten Arab dictators and absolute monarchs…

Why Hariri had to be done with in pomp and in grandeur that left dozen killed, a hundred injured and part of Beirut destroyed? 

Are the powerful assassins sending an honorable farewell to the overbearing friend, the worthy enemy, the great dealer, and the leader who was much bigger than his tiny country?  Apparently the Western Powers have set up a coding style system for eliminating leaders whose time had come and are becoming huge liabilities to the changing political climate. 

I would conjecture that the great powers decided on that murdering style because of the number of times the unfortunate bugger Rafiq Hariri was invited officially to visit their leaders, the frequency of public friendship expressions, the many services they mutually profited, and perhaps the quality and number of citizenships he accumulated, and less probably because of the number of honorable degrees which were bestowed on him by universities.   

Hariri died on Valentine day.  What was his wife Nazek doing in Paris on that day?  Was she expecting Rafiq to join her in Paris or was she to return that evening to Beirut, or was she held in Paris on purpose so that she might not be a member of the deadly motorcade?  Why Hariri was so happy in the morning of his death?  Did he receive the good news from Chirac that Syria will be withdrawing its troops for sure and much sooner than expected, but failed to warn him that his hours were counted in order to efficiently execute that decision?

Jacque Chirac, a President of a proud country, stayed more than six hours with the Hariri’s family to mourn such a great friend of his.  Was Chriac so guilt ridden or had he to shift attention to the real culprit somewhere else?  How come France was so chummy with Israel, immediately after the assassination of Hariri, as if missing an old friend and could not stop chatting and cuddling with Israel for a long period afterward?

How come the US Administration, that didn’t care about Lebanon at this period, has been moving its behind in and out of Lebanon, and shaking them much more than it did during its Iraq invasion? How come the US Administration has been admonishing Israel to stop its public affirmations of the US agreement on its policies  in the Middle East?  

I stated in a previous article that the USA and Israel were the sole culprits and I provided the rationales. I stand a little corrected.  The 1559 UN resolution that was sponsored by the USA and France was the tip of the iceberg of the package deal between these two States, and among the little secret agreements between them was to contract out Israel to eliminate Hariri with utmost prejudice within specific constraints on when and how. 

Israel was overjoyed that the opportunity finally came to erase her enemy number one, off her black list. Hariri not only attempted several times to undermine Israel plans in Lebanon and in the region, but he succeeded hands down in all his political counter offensives against Israel and was still capable of doing Israel great political damages. 

Chirac was relieved from an overbearing friend who kept reminding him of what were the right things to do toward Lebanon.  Chirac knew better that “doing the right things” is not necessarily the right political decisions at this crucial time of his political career.  Chirac was paying dearly from his prestige and France political positions by opposing the persistent pressures from the European Union and the USA to list Hezbollah as one of the terrorist organizations. 

Unperturbed, Hariri kept showing at the Elysee’s door and taking photos with Chirac that said “My dearest friend Chirac” as Sadat used to say to Kissinger, the USA Secretary of State during Nixon, “My dear friend Henry”.

The USA and France had already agreed on plans for the Greater Middle East and time was of the essence.  These plans could not succeed, for certain and on time, with Hariri still alive and active. France, for now, is winning big: it managed to reaffirm her protectorate rights over Syria and Lebanon like during the colonial times, secured her oil rights in Iraq and removed the American veto to selling military hardware to China. 

Israel managed to put the squeeze on Hezbollah and to diligently attempt again to circumvent the rights for the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland with secret deals with, hopefully, the enfeebled new Lebanese governments after the election.  The USA is succeeding in destabilizing Syria and weakening any resolve that Syria might still have to counter the plans in the Greater Middle East.

Hariri had done what was expected from him politically, and his worth was much greater as a martyr:  Lebanon will disengage from Syria as an enemy, and not as a natural economic and social necessity.  Lebanon will continue to remain a weak sectarian Non-State, as was its lot since the colonial status and after its independence, by the agreement of all the regional Arabic States.

The price for Hariri’s life was not certainly worth any stupid friendship that reached the stage of no return on investment, but was becoming a real liability in prestige for Chirac’s France geopolitical interests, the Saudi monarchy, and the plans for a stable Greater Middle East, happy to coexist with Israel while securing the flow of oil at cheap prices. 

A practically tarnished and weakening President, Emil Lahoud quickly agreed to an international investigating team without discussing the details of its composition or duration. The wolves in the world community are going to manhandled Lebanon through special investigating teams, a series of additional international resolutions in order to freely investigate whom they already condemned and sidetrack the facts, the deeds, and the witnesses of the real culprits.

Lebanon will be welcoming an international team of investigators, about 60 of them and for 6 months, automatically renewed for another 6 months and another 6 months until the sectarian blocks and militias in Lebanon organize and ready their forces for another round of internal bloodshed.  

Citizens, what sort of political and economic stability do you expect for Lebanon in the coming year?  Another wave of immigration is already taking place and no noble slogans can undo this trend.  Another political instability will set in for years to come, leaving the economic reforms untouched and as irrelevant to the stability of the country.

Syria offered the cynical wolves the perfect excuse by publicly antagonizing itself with Hariri and forcing an extension to Lahoud’s term; the Syrian ruling personalities and State newspapers sounded like enraged fools having personal animosity with the one who actually bought the highest members in the Syrian government and had extensive business deals with ruling power in Syria at the expense of the Lebanese people. 

Syria was continuously harasses and threatened by the USA and France in order to commit these unforgivable political blunders. It is a masterful coup at the expense of the damned and impotent people of Lebanon.

Note 1: There are lately links to the extremist Moslem Salafists; well, they do follow higher orders too, although implicitly in executing the dirty States decisions.

Note 2: If Nazek Hariri, second wife of Rafiq, is serious about knowing the truth, it is her responsibility to confront the fast becoming senile Chirac.  Nazek has to ask Chirac: “Who killed Rafiq?” Chirac knows exactly who killed Rafiq.