Beware the Streets of Beirut
There should be few questions now about how former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was killed - by a massive bomb that devastated his convoy, the street, and several area hotels. But what kind of bomb was it? Who set it off? Where was the bomb placed? After examining photos of the site and visiting the scene myself - as well as having heard my suspicions confirmed by several experts who have weighed in on the matter - I think that a car bomb can be effectively and conveniently ruled out. In fact, anyone who still believes that Hariri was killed by a car bomb probably needs to check out this site which will certainly set you straight. It even has circles and arrows and simple explanations that make it easy for those of us who are challeged by simple laws of physics, so I can avoid having to repeat the how-and-why explanations that are now becoming commonplace around here.
Now, assuming that I have demonstrated somewhat that this bomb was indeed placed beneath the pavement on the Corniche Boulevard in Ain-am-Mreisse in Beirut and not driven in by a hapless suicide bomber, we could probably proceed from here to consider how the bomb got there. Placing bombs within public works during construction projects has been done before - I am not aware of the history of this kind of massive booby-trap, but as recently as May 9, 2004, Chechen President Ahmad Khadyrov was killed by a bomb that had been placed in the sub-structure of a soccer stadium used to hold a public event he was attending. We can surmise that infiltrating a construction crew by intelligence agents would probably be pretty easy here in Lebanon, especially since most manual labor such as this is done by Syrian workers. However, consider the size of the bomb - one Lebanese expert interviewed by LBC claimed that to make a crater as large as this one, a bomb would need to contain at least one ton of TNT. A bomb that size would take up a lot of space, and the sheer size challeges the notion that the bomb could have been placed under the pavement as incidental to an ongoing road works project. You simply cannot hide a bomb like that in your pocket and shake it out your trouser leg into a hole in the ground. Most likely the bomb was placed during the course of a road work project that was initiated for the purpose of planting this bomb - and if so, such a job would require an entire crew to be in on it. Whatever gaggle of terrorists that planted the bomb would require excavation crews, engineers, and explosive experts, as well as asphalters and laborers in order to get the job done. The activities of these crews should be recorded by whatever ministry handles these kinds of things (Ministry of Transportation, if such a thing exists here), especially in a small country such as Lebanon with fairly centralized control of infrastructure projects. It should have been fairly quick and easy to investigate which company worked on road works in the area during times in question, for instance.
Certainly the sophistication and level of planning involved in Hariri's assassination indicates state-level actors. However, even this kind of meticulous planning has its limits - perhaps the convoy does not stop in the place desired; perhaps he takes a different route; perhaps a last-second change in his schedule precludes an event for which the terrorists are prepared to kill him. In the case of contingencies such as these, there is usually a Plan B, Plan C, or even a D and E. The point I am trying to make is that if the "sub-pavement bomb" were the means with which the perps had decided to kill him, then it certainly stands to reason that they got him on the first go-round, for there were no other explosions, no failed attempts, no evidence of botched operations anywhere. It was sheer luck, a most fortuitious chain of events for a terrorist. My point here is that this was probably not the way the perps expected it to go - and quite possibly they had planned for other opportunities to get him. My wife and I debated this at length a few days ago - and she has been difficult to convince that there are not unexploded bombs underneath many of the streets of Beirut, designed to take advantage of the many routes his convoy could have or would have taken over a given period of time. And considering the many, many road work projects that have been happening in the past few weeks and months, I am not sure I am convinced of the impossibility of such a proposition either.
There exists yet another potential angle on this story. As I mentioned before, Chechen President Ahmad Khadyrov was killed by a sub-surface bomb placed in the concrete within the stadium at which he attended a ceremony; Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev ultimately claimed credit for the assassination. In the country that saw the development and perfection of the car bomb, this kind of technique has not seen much use (actually, I cannot think of any instance of this kind of bomb - if anyone does know, please inform me), so there is room for suggestion that the planners of the Hariri assassination were at least inspired by Basayev's handiwork. If so, it seems strange to me that a novel technique being used for the first time should work exactly as expected on the first try. If I were a betting man (and I'm not, incidentally, but I'll talk like I am anyway), my money would be on the involvement of foreign technical experts in collusion with whatever state-level actors worked out the details on Hariri's assassination. Now how's that for ominous portent?
posted by Unfrozen Caveman Linguist @ 10:53 AM
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The location of the bomb: given the layout of downtown Beirut, what is the probability that Hariri motorcade could avoid travelling this corniche as he went out about this business.
The timing of the detonation: I'm wondering if web cameras haven't been installed throughout Beirut - it would be relatively easy to monitor a motorcade in city traffic - several web cameras could have been installed in the hotel under renovation and the bomb triggered remotely. It will be interesting to see if they can determine the trigger used.
I'm just curious - why is it taking so long for the UN team to arrive in Beirut? Will they site be cleaned up by the time they get there?
True that surveillance would have been crucial to the operation. The problem with webcams here, though, is that they require the internet. High speed internet is almost nonexistent here in Lebanon (save for direct satellite access, which very few people have), thereby making exercising a web cam option almost more trouble than it would be worth. So, monitoring Hariri's past movements as well as the movement of his motorcade would probably have to be done the old fashioned way - with people.
The government here pretty much made it clear that they did not want an effective investigation to take place, mostly via delaying tactics, such as saying that they already had their own investigation going on. I don't think the government here counted on the sheer volume of speculation and international chatter that the event caused, though. On another note, it is quite possible that a lot of key evidence will have vanished by the time they international investigators start their work, but a bomb that size will have left many, many clues just the same. The largest problem will not be in finding the culprits, but in getting the government to exhibit the will to accept responsibility for whatever outcome the investigation produces. This is something they have never really done before under similar circumstances - take the bomb that almost killed former minister Marwan Hamadeh, for example.
Elie Hobeika was killed in recent years by a car bomb, and in 2003 (maybe it was 04) a mid-level intelligence or military officer with the surname Aql had his feet blown off by a bomb placed under the pedals of his car.
I have been thinking about the possibility of bombs underneath Beirut motorways. Recently, there was construction on the street that passes through Saniya Park and becomes Spears. It is at the intersection near Concorde.
There was also strange construction on the street that leads from Sodeco to Selim al-Hoss. It is the street that passes through Karakol Druze, over Shara Mar Elias, past the Murabitoun sign, and ends at Selim al-Hoss where you can either go down to Concorde or up and around the big Druze center.
A Hariri supporter told me that the security cameras at HSBC, St. Georges, Monroe, The Palm Beach, and the Phoenicia would have caught the construction on camera. He said that the tapes have been removed.
He also noted that the Lebanese government and Syria would immediately have called for international investigations by the FBI, et al had they not done it. Although, there are myriad reasons why they might not have called on foreign investigators even if they truly had not committed the act. For one thing, it would have undermined their credibility to manage the country without the need of foreign intervention.
I have also been wondering whether the bomb was planted to take out Hariri specifically, or if they were waiting for the first motorcade to pass through. Leaving the downtown, I've seen Hariri's motorcade take a different route many times before. Instead of going down to the Corniche when leaving the city center, it went up to the street that later on becomes Hamra. It is the street on which Haigazian University, a few ministries (I think tourism and Finance), and a branch office of Banque de la Mediterranee reside. Thus, he could have avoided the sitting bomb.
Many people have commented that this might have been an inside job. Although Hariri's security were known to be incredibly loyal, there is the possibility that someone inside tipped them off or that someone or something had been planted inside his security apparatus.
Of course, it is also possible that the placement of the bomb was more than just sheer luck. From what I have heard, Hariri had recently purchased the pier in front of the St. Georges. Perhaps a photo-op or something was listed in his public schedule, so they knew he would pass by the site.
In Beirut, it would not be very difficult to plant people at the tops of buildings to create a continuous line of site from the politicians first location to the assassination point. Then again, a bomb as big as this one did not need to pinpoint the exact car the target was in. It took out more than one vehicle in the motorcade. The help of rooftop spotters would probably not be necessary with a bomb big enough to leave a massive crater in the ground, destroy structural parts of two buildings, and blow all of the windows out of buildings across the city.
Thank you for sharing all that information - I too have noticed the construction on Spears Street. There was also some brief construction - i saw them replacing a very long pipe - at the corner of Emile Eddeh St. and the road that comes out of Clemenceau and heads into Verdun (same intersection as the Liberty Tower). This route gives Hariri's motorcade direct access from Qoreitem to the "autostrad," and would usually provide him his fastest route to the downtown area as well as Achrafieh and even the Jal el-Dib highway if he were to head north. I am almost positive that this area would have been under heavy surveillance for any hit.
Also, we have to remember that Hariri was not the only target - so was Jumblatt (and remains so, most likely), and he too has a residence in the immediate vicinity (Clemenceau). Of course, he was forewarned by the Lebanese government's action of removing the small security zone in front of his house a couple months ago, so I am sure he is now avoiding that area entirely.
Any hit such as this would have involved a fairly substantial security breach, or at least it would have been the goal of the attackers to infiltrate his security somehow, if only to have some kind of access to his schedule. I am also a little skeptical that his security had a major breach, since he seemed to have inspired a high level of loyalty among his security, and they seemed to be very professional (at least compared to ninety percent of the so-called "bodyguards" in this country - basically thugs, for the most part).
I wonder how it would become common knowledge that security camera tapes from several locations just disappeared, if indeed that really is not just heresay (which it may well be, what with people gossiping so much about what happened). I have already noticed that government members actively discuss the particulars of ongoing investigations in press conferences and the like - and I am sure that leaks occur in lots of other places as well. Compromise seems to occur as a matter of course here. Therefore, we can pretty much write off the prospect that any investigation will be airtight, even if it is done by international investigators at this point.
First of all I'd like to commend you on a very well-kept blog, a very good read.
Second, I agree with almost all of the above analysis you posited on the bomb that took out Hariri. But I just want to point out something that could possibly make your argument even stronger. Mass of TNT is used internationally as a unit to measure the destructive power of an explosion. Even nuclear weapons are described in units of "Megatons of TNT". TNT itself as an expolosive is rarely used these days, for the very points you make about it being difficult to transport and not very stable. There are alternate materials in use commercially that are far more effective than TNT and thus are easier to transport and plant (e.g. C4). What kind of exotic mix of chemicals does a clandestine party that plans to assassinate a man of Hariri's position have at it's disposal? I fear to know...
Ramzi -
Thanks so much for the compliment, and you make a good point. I am not sure how much C4 it would have taken to move that much earth - more than a fistful, that's for sure. And plastique is neither easy to get nor inexpensive, and there lies the point - not only did the perps have solid organization and some connections, they had loads of cash. Thanks for bringing it up.
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