Lebanon: The Return (?) of Rafiq al-Hariri
In the world of globalization, the big billions can challenge the big battalions; if Rafiq al-Hariri returns to the Prime Ministership in Lebanon, it will be with the approval of Syria, but few believe he was Syria’s first choice as candidate: his billions may have spoken louder than the battalions (the 30,000 Syrian troops in Lebanon).
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The results of the two-round Lebanese Parliamentary elections on August 27 and September 3 were a resounding success for former Prime Minister (1992-98) Rafiq al-Hariri and his supporters and allies. (For more on the Syrian connection, See Page Two.) Hariri stands a good chance, if not a near certainty, of becoming Prime Minister again. Though his lists swept Beirut and several other areas, his bloc is only some 43 deputies out of 128; he must still forge alliances with other blocs.
Since Hariri was ousted — or more precisely, his threat to resign was accepted — by President Emile Lahoud on taking office in December 1998 (See
The Estimate, December 4, 1998), early analysis has tended to see this as a defeat for Lahoud. Certainly, as noted on Between the Lines, Lahoud is more clearly a loser than Syria is, but Lebanese politics often has worked best when various power centers are balanced against each other, and arguably, this is a redressing of the balance: during Hariri’s Prime Ministership from 1992 until 1998, he served with a weak President, Elias Hrawi; the stronger Emile Lahoud has had an experienced technocrat, Salim al-Hoss, as his Prime Minister since late 1998 and has dominated the equation. Lebanon long had a strong presidential system, but under the Ta’if Accords of 1989, the balance of power between the Maronite President, Sunni Prime Minister and Shi‘ite Speaker of Parliament has been more frequently described as a troika, in which the “three Presidents” (all are ra’is in Arabic: President of the Republic, President of the Council of Ministers, President of Parliament) have roughly equal power. If Hariri returns as Prime Minister, three strong men will hold the three strong posts.The results of the elections and the regional implications are discussed on Page Two. This Dossier looks at the implications of the return of Hariri, and offers a detailed profile of Hariri himself.
Even before its deadly 1975-1990 civil war, Lebanon was one of the most difficult Arab countries for outsiders to understand. Professor Michael Hudson called one of his early books Lebanon: The Precarious Republic, a title which, after 1975, took on a grim sense of self-fulfilling prophecy, when a country which had long walked a tightrope suddenly took the plunge.
There is little to be gained by revisiting the civil war here. When Lebanon emerged at the end of its trials, it had some 35,000 Syrian troops occupying most of the country, an Israeli and Israeli-client force occupying the southern part, and an economy — once the Middle East’s most dynamic — totally destroyed by a decade and a half of war, communal violence, and vendetta. It looked to the world for reconstruction assistance, but always also had to look over its shoulder at Damascus, the deus ex machina which had ended the civil war, at the cost of occupation by a country which shared few of Lebanon’s traditions of pluralism, capitalism, or competitive elections.
The Lebanese, or some of them — perhaps not as many as a generation ago — still like to remind the world that they are the heirs of the Phoenicians, the great traders of the ancient world. Throughout the Middle East and Africa, and the Americas as well, Lebanese have gone as traders. Some have made great wealth abroad. A few have brought it home. In the midst of the devastation of the civil war, one such Lebanese who had made it big abroad became famous for his philanthropy, building hospitals and schools which took no notice of the religious or confessional affiliations of the students and patients, and was determined to help rebuild his homeland.
It is easy to make Rafiq al-Hariri sound a bit like Mother Theresa — he has, after all, quite a large public relations staff to make sure one knows every donation he has made — and Mother Theresa never had four billion dollars. That is not to denigrate Hariri, merely to note that he is first of all a businessman. (But then, all philanthropists do have to make their money before they can spend it.) Hariri is one of the rare expatriates to ever win Saudi citizenship, yet he returned to Lebanon to enter politics. Whether that bespeaks patriotism, love of homeland, self-sacrifice, or mere political ambition depends on one’s view of Hariri.
The recent elections show that Hariri has become a popular figure in Lebanon; but he also has enemies. That is the nature of the Lebanese polity. During his 1992-96 premiership, he presided over the reconstruction of the capital, Beirut, and was successful in bringing in overseas investment; but his critics noted that the country’s biggest enterprise, Solidère, founded by Hariri, was deeply involved in the reconstruction effort, making much money while the country went deeply into debt.
He is a man with a great deal of money, and a man who enjoys power; both make for more enemies. He is a man who presided over the reconstruction of a devastated country: that meant large contracts, and the inevitable charges of corruption. He is also a man whose mere threat to resign could depress the stock market and cause the currency to drop. Hariri has certainly used his wealth to enhance his political power. At the same time, his wealth has in some ways been a liability. The country’s huge debt from reconstruction, and perceptions of favoritism and corruption, helped bring about his ouster in 1998; the fact that growth has stagnated and the economy has been even weaker under Salim al-Hoss helped bring him back. Hoss is a veteran politician and by most accounts a scrupulously honest man, but he lacks the almost Rabelaisian personality of Hariri (in fact Hoss is a rather gray figure).
At presstime, Hariri was still insisting that he was not certain he would be the next Prime Minister. Certainly he has some dealmaking ahead of him in order to win a parliamentary majority. But with Syria seemingly willing to see him in power again (See
Between the Lines), his victory in the elections should pave the way for forging alliances — with Jumblatt and the Shi‘ite alliance, most likely — which will give him the job.After that, however, the prospects are less clear. Some analysts have already noted that Hariri’s first job may be to reduce expectations: people disgusted with the economic performance of the last two years may expect miracles, and Hariri’s may not be able to deliver.
In addition, the Prime Minister is only one member of the troika, and there is now bad blood between Hariri and Lahoud. Lahoud, the former Armed Forces Commander, is strong-willed; Lahoud and Hariri (and the mercurial Berri) will have to balance their personalities if Hariri returns as Prime Minister, and all must keep on good terms with Syria, the always present, if also frequently unwelcome, player in the Lebanese political equation.
Rafiq Baha‘ al-Din al-Hariri
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Rafiq al-Hariri |
The breakthrough for the future billionaire came in 1977 — two years after Lebanon collapsed into civil war — when he managed to complete construction of the Ta’if Intercontinental Hotel in Saudi Arabia in 243 days, completing it to a deadline other contractors had reportedly said was impossible, in order to provide extra rooms for an Islamic summit conference. That won him the favor of the Saudi Royal Family. In 1978 he founded Saudi OGER, one of the keystones of his industrial empire, and with the patronage of the Royal Family he won additional contracts for building hotels, hospitals, schools and other institutions during the period of maximum Saudi growth. He further invested in real estate worldwide, and his global networks have continued to grow. He also received that rarest of Saudi accolades: citizenship for a foreign-born immigrant, though he would later revert to his Lebanese citizenship to become Prime Minister. As his wealth increased, Hariri responded to the continuing civil war in Lebanon by founding, in 1979, what became the Hariri Foundation, dedicated to providing educational opportunities for poor and middle-class Lebanese children. Hariri, a Sunni Muslim by background, became known for his philanthropic efforts in his home city of Sidon, where the majority of the population are Shi‘ite, at a time when confessionalism was tearing the country apart.
Indeed, despite his success in Saudi Arabia and homes around the world, Hariri always remained close to Lebanon and to Sidon. In 1980 he began construction of the Kfrafalous University complex. After the Israeli invasion of 1982 he provided the Lebanese government with assistance, and helped rebuild Sidon, devastated in the war. In 1983 he helped negotiate the reopening of Beirut airport, and in 1989 he helped broker the Ta’if Agreements, setting out the outline for the end of the civil war and the revision of the Lebanese National Pact.
These activities during the 1980s gave Hariri a reputation as a philanthropist, a Lebanese patriot and a man who was above confessional prejudice. More importantly perhaps, it marked him as a man with very deep pockets (some estimates of his worth have reached $4 billion or more) and a willingness to spend to rebuild Lebanon.
Hariri is usually described as a man of enormous ambitions; in person he certainly comes across as a man who enjoys his wealth but is also determined to use it for maximum influence, in philanthropy but also in politics. Political ambitions, of course, could go nowhere in Saudi Arabia, but in his devastated homeland, he was a welcome candidate. On October 28, 1992, he was named Prime Minister of Lebanon, a post which had seen its power enhanced under the Ta’if Accords he had supported. The post must, under the National Pact, go to a Sunni, and a billionaire Sunni willing to invest in reconstruction seemed a prime candidate for the job. He had Syria’s approval, though he has never been seen as a Syrian stooge. And of course, no one pretends that had Hariri been a man of modest means he would have been given the job.
Hariri served as Prime Minister during the Presidency of Elias Hrawi, a man of modest ambition often seen as doing Syria’s will. The much more assertive Hariri easily overshadowed Hrawi, shifting the balance of power in the post-Ta’if “troika” of the President, Prime Minister, and Speaker of Parliament. (The President is always a Maronite, the Prime Minister a Sunni and the Speaker — currently Nabih Berri — a Shi‘ite.)
No one denies that Hariri was the major driving force behind the reconstruction of war-ravaged Beirut. How much money he and his friends made in the process is usually the question raised. But his premiership strengthened the lira and the stock market, and won support from international investors and the Lebanese diaspora., despite the charges of corruption and running up a high debt.
Hariri was a somewhat mercurial Prime Minister. He is something of an oddity in Lebanon, where so many of the communal leaders are second or third generation feudal chieftains — the Cham‘ouns, Jumblatts, Gemayels or Frangiehs. He is a self-made man, but one who happens to have several billion dollars at his disposal.
In December of 1992, only weeks after taking charge, Israel expelled some 400 Palestinians to Lebanon; Hariri refused to admit them, provoking a border crisis. During his first term as Prime Minister, he concentrated on the reconstruction of central Beirut. In May 1995, he was reappointed Prime Minister. Periodically, when Hariri would come into conflict with either President Hrawi or Speaker Berri, he would threaten to resign. Invariably, the threat alone was enough to depress the stock market and the exchange rate of the Lebanese lira, and Hariri would be kept in office and concessions made. It proved to be a potent tool, given the influence he personally had on the Lebanese economy, then struggling to rebuild. In late 1996 Hariri helped organize a “Friends of Lebanon” conference in Washington which helped raise funds for reconstruction.
Hariri’s premiership was not always as popular as the size of his victory might lead one to believe; many distrusted the role of money in consolidating his power, and questioned the awarding of reconstruction contracts. But the mere threat of resignation seemed enough to provoke a crisis and keep him in power.
The Presidential elections of 1998, however, saw the replacement of the weak, aging and ill Hrawi with the vigorous head of the Armed Forces, General Emile Lahoud. Hariri had already been quarreling with Speaker Berri on a regular basis, and many expected that with three strong figures competing, the troika concept would be strained. Most initially at least expected the main tensions to be between Hariri and Berri, but when Hariri and Lahoud disagreed on formation of a Cabinet at the end of 1998, Hariri made his usual gesture of resigning — and this time, Lahoud called his bluff. Hariri was out, and longtime former Prime Minister Salim al-Hoss was in. Hoss is a technocrat, a competent enough man generally considered honest, and a Sunni as required, but his appointment saw drops in the market and the lira, given the departure of Hariri. Within the limited range of Syrian-controlled politics in Lebanon, Hariri has been a very visible, and felt, leader of the opposition to Lahoud. A member of Parliament and head of a bloc there, Hariri has been positioning himself since 1998 to regain his premiership. If Syria permits it, he is likely to have succeeded with the results of these elections. And that means that two strong-willed men, Hariri and Lahoud, one a man whose power came from money and the other a man trained in the military tradition, will be testing each other’s power — and no one should count out Speaker Berri, either, for the troika may well be pulling at times in three different directions.
Since 1977 Hariri has been married to the former Nazek Audi. She currently heads the Hariri Foundation and other activities. The Saudi Oger company, the foundation of the family wealth, is currently headed by Hariri’s son Sa‘d, now 30 (by an earlier marriage).
Hariri’s personality is a strong one, he is an optimist and a hard driver, more entrepreneur than politician.
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Hariri with wife and extended family |
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