Dynamic Billionaire Rebuilt His Nation From Ruins of War

When Rafik Hariri returned home to Lebanon as prime minister after decades of serving as a building contractor to the Saudi royal family, and getting fabulously rich in the process, he found a country broken spiritually and materially by 15 years of war.

In 1992, the bearish man with bushy eyebrows set about to reconstruct Beirut, strengthen a fragile peace between sects, and resuscitate Lebanon into something approaching its former reputation as a Mediterranean sanctuary for business, vacations and high living.

After he left office last year, he remained, as people liked to call him, “Mr. Lebanon.” Although he was often criticized for using public contracts to boost his vast fortune, few would argue that he had transformed his country.

A Time magazine profile in 1993 described Hariri this way: “Everything about Hariri is big -- his houses, his fortune ... his Rabelaisian appetites for food, real estate, banks, radio and TV stations, newspapers and power. And now he is playing a central role in his country’s comeback ... helped by a tenacity commensurate with his prodigious size.”

His was a story of rinds to riches. Born in 1945 to a family of lemon farmers near the southern port of Sidon, he became one of the world’s wealthiest men, gadding about in his private Boeings and enjoying a lifestyle that exceeded that of many of the Arab princes with whom he hobnobbed. He counted French President Jacques Chirac as a close friend.

Hariri maintained homes around the world and a business empire in Saudi Arabia through his sons. He recently considered building what would have been one of America’s largest and most expensive private residences on 16 acres in Washington, D.C.

His staff referred to him as “the Sheik,” a title he picked up in Saudi Arabia, but in personal encounters he was modest, sometimes padding down to newspaper interviews in a bathrobe, his hair rumpled from an afternoon nap.

A Sunni Muslim in a country then controlled by Christians, he studied at a commercial college in Beirut and left, at age 21, for a job as a teacher and part-time accountant in Saudi Arabia.

He could not afford to graduate. Later, he personally founded schools and paid to educate 30,000 Lebanese students through his Hariri Foundation.

Hariri arrived in Saudi Arabia in time to take advantage of the oil boom of the late 1960s and ‘70s, and early enough to avoid the catastrophic civil war brewing in his own country. There, restive Muslims were rising up against the established Maronite order, the country’s delicate internal balance among Christians, Sunnis and Shiites having been undone by the arrival of Yasser Arafat and thousands of Palestinian fighters in the early 1970s.

Ambitious, brash and energetic, Hariri founded a contracting company and began getting work. According to some published accounts, he won his place with the Saudi royals by building a complete palace for then-King Khalid within the six-month deadline, after others had said it would be impossible.

More contracts followed as the Saudi family, awash in oil wealth, remade their kingdom with palaces, highways, apartment blocks, schools and hospitals.

Favored by his patrons, Hariri was allowed to become a Saudi citizen, an honor rarely given to outsiders.

By the early 1980s, he had won the friendship and trust of the then-crown prince -- later King Fahd -- who sent Hariri to Lebanon to mediate the fighting between militias. Hariri became the moving force behind the Saudi-sponsored Taif Conference of 1989 that helped to end the civil war that had claimed an estimated 100,000 Lebanese lives.

Under the agreement, Lebanon was left a virtual fiefdom of late Syrian President Hafez Assad, who was allowed to keep his army there in exchange for guaranteeing internal stability. Lebanon had lost much of its independence but gained an uneasy peace and a chance to recover.

By 1992, most of the bombings had ceased, but Lebanon was still mired in stagnation, depression and uncertainty. That’s when Hariri was promoted by Syria and Saudi Arabia as prime minister.

Although a novice at government, he was seen as a dynamic billionaire who could send a message that Lebanon had reopened for business.

Hariri served five terms as prime minister, from 1992 to 1998 and from 2000 to 2004. During that time he campaigned for international assistance and debt relief, sought to bring back tourism and investment, and, most notably, oversaw the reconstruction of Beirut’s historic center.

The revived city center had become the symbol of Lebanon’s rebirth. Bombed-out structures have been replaced by attractive office buildings, pedestrian malls and a marina, while new luxury hotels stretch to the south along the famous Corniche.

The urban development was overseen by Solidere, a real estate corporation in which Hariri bought large amounts of shares and which he encouraged the rest of the country to invest in.

His years as politician were less remarkable than his business career. Vying with politicians who had commanded militias or had armies of party loyalists behind them, he fell back on his money, his media savvy -- among other things, he owned newspapers and a popular TV channel -- and his Saudi and international connections to get things done.

But he had to walk a fine line of publicly asserting Lebanon’s independence while continuing to respect the Taif understandings with Syria. His government also went through several confrontations with Israel, whose peace overtures he repeatedly rejected in keeping with long-standing Syrian policies.

Whatever his failings as a politician and statesman, “he left a legacy. He was the man most responsible for rebuilding Lebanon after the war. Nobody is going to take that away from him,” said Michael Young, a Middle East political analyst in Beirut.

Jamil Mroue, a newspaper publisher from a prominent Lebanese family who has criticized Hariri in the past, said that if it weren’t for his money, Hariri would have been “second rate” as a politician, but it may not matter to history.

“Very few men have built cities. As the details of his human frailties recede, there will remain the edifice that he left, and that edifice is the city of Beirut. Because the city is more or less the nation here, he is a quasi-nation builder,” Mroue said.

“All the maneuverings, the business, the beady-eyed and under-the-table dealings he’d have done may end up in a biography. But he’ll be remembered as a city builder.”

Stack reported from Beirut and Daniszewski from Baghdad.