In charge of military intelligence in Beirut from 1982 to 2002, Gen. Ghazi Kenaan was effectively the Syrian Viceroy of Lebanon
In charge of military intelligence in Beirut from 1982 to 2002, Gen. Ghazi Kenaan was effectively the Syrian Viceroy of Lebanon. A hardliner in the little Baathist clique around Hafez Assad, and then his son and heir Bashar Assad, Kenaan was greatly feared. His lust for power and money was legendary. On account of his intelligence background, he was widely suspected of organizing the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri. His assets in the United States have been frozen, and the United Nations investigation into the assassination of Hariri has been closing in on him. Nobody need be too surprised, then, that he has been found shot dead in his office. His career suggests that he would always take other people’s lives rather than his own-but the official Syrian word was “suicide.” A colleague of Kenaan’s, however, did not quite toe the line. Foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, another veteran of the Assad clique, told reporters that “unjust and vague information” had contributed to the “killing”-whereupon he quickly corrected himself, “I mean the suicide.” As the KGB used to say, any fool can commit a murder, but it takes an artist to commit a suicide.