Hazem Saghieh detects promise in the panic that followed the assassination of Rafiq Al-Hariri The immediate response to news of the assassination on Monday of former Prime Minister Rafiq Al-Hariri was panic. The blast that rang out across Beirut resurrected the ghosts of 15 years of civil war and as they looked past demons in the face many in Lebanon wondered whether they were witnessing the beginning of a new period of conflict. Wars, as Freud noted, bring with them a familiarity with death. People get used to the idea of dying. During times of peace they shun death, to the point of refusing to name the ailments of which it is a result. Until a few days ago Lebanon was indulging in the illusion of peace, relishing the accessories -- the cafés, restaurants and Beirut's beautifully rebuilt commercial centre, the embodiment of Hariri's achievement -- that come with a normal life. But for war to be consigned to the past requires more than a passing acquaintance with psychoanalysis. It requires political will. The assassination of Hariri betrays the absence of such will in Lebanon. Hariri was forced out of office by an alliance between the Syrian military and the Lebanese president, himself a former army chief. And as the harassment of his supporters escalated Hariri moved closer to the opposition. Had he followed his ally, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, and openly joined their ranks, the move would have dealt a fatal blow to the myth that the opposition in Lebanon is exclusively Christian. Hariri was assassinated amid an obscuring fog of rumour. He was financing the opposition to Syria. His friendship with French President Jacques Chirac lay behind UN Security Council Resolution 1559. If those responsible for Hariri's assassination wanted to create a state of panic in Lebanon they could not have chosen a better target. Hariri had come to embody post-civil war Lebanon and its dreams of stability. His political career began with the end of the civil war, his rise inextricably tied to the 1989 Taif Agreement, the prelude to peace in Lebanon. For those emerging from the trauma of a decade and a half of destruction, Hariri offered the reassurance that Lebanon could be rebuilt. It was to prove his most important political asset. Even the most vociferous critics of his economic policies were embarrassed into silence once they were reminded that he was rebuilding what the leaders of militias, in a war in which he had not participated, destroyed. Though a Lebanese Sunni leader, Hariri was a moderate, certainly when compared to other sectarian leaders in Lebanon. And he was urban, distanced from the radical politics of rural leaders. After years of isolation and despair he convinced the Lebanese they could reintegrate with the international community. And with Hariri at the helm it seemed to be true: Beirut was gradually regaining its position as the investment and tourism capital of the Middle East and the city's inhabitants pieced together the confidence that had been shattered by years of marginalisation. Hariri's rise to power marked a shift in the dominant pattern of political leadership in the Arab world. Before him leadership had been the monopoly of the sheikh, the military, the prince. He was the first businessman to become a political leader, a radical step in modernising Arab politics, and one blown away, with much else, by 300 kilogrammes of explosives. The assassination of Hariri sounds a wake up call: the Lebanese now know that the road to independence will be more difficult than it was in 1943, when the French army evacuated without a drop of blood being shed. The people of Lebanon now understand that many more bombs will explode, and many more lives will be lost, before independence is achieved. In the wake of the assassination the Lebanese opposition is speaking with one voice, and they are saying the same thing. Syrian troops must pull out of Lebanon. The present regime must abandon power. It is no longer possible to distinguish between Maronite phalangist Amin Jumayal and Druze socialist Walid Jumblatt -- archenemies in the 1980s. They sound the same note. The moment of truth is approaching, for both Lebanon and Syria. It is the 11th hour in the relationship between the two countries. And if it turns out to be more cruel than any other previous moment, then so be it. Recognising this fact is the only way of transforming present panic into a positive charge for change. Those who seek, in pursuing their own ends, to remind the Lebanese people of the horrors of civil war could do far worse than recall the Indian story of the tribe that dosed each newborn baby with small amounts of poison so as to ensure future immunity against larger doses.
