BEIRUT: “Haven’t they told you that I aspire to become the new caliph of Muslims?” Interior Minister Nouhad Machnouk quipped, when asked about his rumored ambition to climb the echelons of Lebanese politics. “Of course I have political ambitions. I don’t own a telecoms company – politics is what I do,” he added.
As he often does, the journalist turned politician with a strong penchant for collecting art presses a hand to the desk in front of him when emphasizing a point. He reiterated that Future Movement leader Saad Hariri, and no one else, should be Lebanon’s next prime minister.
“Hariri is not my choice for the prime minister post only. It goes beyond that,” Machnouk told The Daily Star at his sumptuous office in the Interior Ministry, a French-era building on the edge of Ras Beirut. “Saad Hariri is a political necessity and a national necessity.”
About the son of his late employer and friend Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, Machnouk maintains that only Saad Hariri is capable of foiling attempts to radicalize Lebanon’s Sunnis and engaging in dialogue with Hezbollah.
When asked about a change of heart toward dealing with Hezbollah, the minister replied with a snap: “We live in a region where Sunni-Shiite strife is proliferating by the day. What other choice do I have?”
“I wouldn’t talk about a change of heart because emotions have nothing to do here,” he added. “My goal is to [momentarily] freeze divisive files and engage in a dialogue over how to bring Lebanon back into its shell to insulate it from the fires surrounding us.”
The answer is in line with a political pragmatism that has come to define Machnouk’s style. One of the Future Movement’s hawks, known for his scathing diatribes against Hezbollah, he has turned into the peacemaker in Prime Minister Tammam Salam’s government and one of the main backers of dialogue with the Shiite party.
Machnouk is well aware that it is the ongoing dialogue between the Future and Hezbollah and the underlying tacit agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran to preserve Lebanon’s stability that has given him enough leverage to act on thorny files such as Roumieh Prison’s Block B, implement security plans in hot spots such as Tripoli and Baalbek, and curb the influx of Syrian refugees into Lebanon. But Machnouk, an expert in the art of nuance, rejects the label “pragmatic.”
“I am not pragmatic when it comes to the principles,” he says. “There is a big difference between being in the opposition, where I was not pragmatic and went to the extreme, and being in office.”
“I am now the interior minister of all of Lebanon and I act accordingly,” he continued. “Otherwise, I shouldn’t have accepted the post in the first place.”
Born in Beirut in 1955, Machnouk began a career in journalism in the 1970s and wrote for several of the Arab world’s most prominent publications including Al-Ousbou al-Arabi, As-Sayyad and An-Nahar, to name a few.
Thanks to the excellent ties he had with the Palestinian leadership based in Beirut, he quickly became an expert on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He was also known to be a vocal critic of Syrian hegemony over Lebanon.
In his highly revealing series of autobiographical articles dubbed “Quadruple Exile,” published in the Beirut-based As-Safir newspaper in 2006, Machnouk wrote an emotive account of his arrest by Syrian forces in 1976 while on a date with “the woman with the green eyes,” as the author refers to her.
Following the Israeli invasion of 1982 and the withdrawal of Palestinian factions from Lebanon, Machnouk formed, along with his mentor late former Prime Minister Takieddine Solh, Grand Mufti Sheikh Hasan Khaled and lawmaker Nazem al-Qaderi, what came to be known as the “Islamic Gathering” in 1983.
The group called for putting an end to the Lebanese Civil War and was vocal in demanding an end to Syria’s presence in Lebanon. The direct result of their call came swiftly, with the assassination of two of the Islamic Gathering’s members, Khaled and Qaderi, while Solh was forced to leave the country. As threats against him grew, Machnouk headed to Cyprus and from there to Paris in the late 1980s.
It was in Paris that Machnouk met Rafik Hariri, a Lebanese businessman who would a few years later become Lebanon’s prime minister and the country’s most prominent politician in the post-Civil War era until his assassination in 2005.
After he became prime minister in 1992, Hariri appointed Machnouk as his political and media adviser.
As a matter of fact, Machnouk talks about “three tens” that marked his career and shaped his political understanding: The 10 years he covered the Palestinian resistance in Lebanon, the next 10 with the Islamic Gathering and last but not least the 10 years he spent working with Rafik Hariri.
But have the “three tens” become “four tens” now that he heads the Interior Ministry?
Machnouk is conclusive, saying that “despite the documented threats against me ... what I am living now, I consider as the fourth 10 and I want them to be successful.”
Does he fear for his life? “I don’t think about threats, otherwise I won’t be able to achieve anything,” he says, with a dismissive gesture.
Those who know him all characterize Machnouk as a confident and farsighted go-getter. Aside from the accounts of his friends, Machnouk’s accomplishments as interior minister in the past year stand witness.
Early morning on Jan. 13 an elite force from the Internal Security Forces raided Roumieh Prison, clearing the jail’s notorious Block B of its Islamist inmates after intercepting calls between the militants and members of the cell behind the Jan. 10 suicide bombings that killed at least nine people and wounded more than 30 in Tripoli’s majority-Alawite neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen.
“As soon as communication data established that contact has been actually made between Roumieh and the suicide bombers, I said it’s now or never,” Machnouk disclosed, adding that the plan to storm Block B had been finalized three months prior to the day of the execution.
Machnouk recalled that he made the decision to storm Block B upon his return from Jabal Mohsen. “It was 10 p.m. on a Saturday and I was sitting here in the office when I called Brig. Osman, who oversees the plan, and told him we must act,” he said, in reference to Brig. Imad Osman, head of the ISF’s intelligence arm, the Information Branch.
Machnouk said he informed Salam, Saad Hariri and Lebanese Army commander Gen. Jean Kahwagi of the plan. “It was then 6:30 a.m. and we were done at 3:30 p.m,” he adds, with a tinge of pride. “We moved 865 prisoners with great precision and professionalism without a drop of blood spilled.”
He announced that the renovated Block B would become operational again on May 1, exactly 100 days after the operation.
Machnouk considers that contrary to his expectations, the Block B operation was “elegantly executed.”
Indeed, elegance is a quality the avid cigar smoker holds in high regard. The once-barren walls of the Interior Ministry are now decorated with artworks from Machnouk’s own private collection and forgotten paintings he recovered from the Culture Ministry’s collection.
“I am a firm believer that one should not stay in a place that does not resemble them,” he states. “You should personalize the space and take care of it.”
The Interior Ministry building indeed housed Machnouk’s office back when he was Rafik Hariri’s adviser. His closeness to the premier did not erase past grudges with the Syrians, who accused him in 1998 of upholding ties with Israel, eventually forcing him into exile to Paris and Cairo until 2003.
The father of four who married twice acknowledged that these were the most difficult seven years of his life. “The unfair accusations have had a strong impact on me, on my life and on my family.”
“I left this place on Nov. 5, 1998, accused of [higher treason] but I came back to it [17 years later] a minister,” he continued. “It’s over now. It’s from a past era.”
Machnouk, who his entourage calls an authority in handling the intricacies of Lebanese politics, says he cannot conceive himself outside the project of the Hariri family.
He categorically dismissed reports that thanks to a strong network of connections in Riyadh – that are not necessarily linked to Saad Hariri – he plans to present himself as the alternative for the Hariris in Lebanon.
“Frankly speaking, my connections in Saudi Arabia have been greatly exaggerated,” he explained, saying that following the death of King Abdullah, the Saudi administration underwent radical changes. “I barely know anyone there now.”
He added that while he might have “a good reputation” among the Saudis, “this is not a decisive factor.”
While he lamented the “deplorable” state of Lebanon’s political class, which he says currently lacks “wise men” of the likes of Takieddine Solh and Rafik Hariri, Machnouk added that Lebanon has proven to be the region’s “most resilient regime.”
Will regional vicissitudes force Lebanon to change its political system? The interior minister reiterated categorically that Lebanon’s current system was “the most resilient in the region.”
Revealing yet another facet of his complex personality, Machnouk ended the conversation on an optimistic note.
“We still live in a civil state with a functioning Parliament and Cabinet, and we’re working to elect a new president,” he declared. “States in our surrounding are literally collapsing, while we can still protest in the streets, implement projects, veto projects and we have an Army and a police force and a public administration and employees.”
Machnouk maintained that while there was no solution on the horizon for regional conflicts if Lebanon succeeds in escaping regional fires, the country’s future would be a bright one.
“Never forget we have [offshore] oil and gas [reserves],” he says, once again pressing his hand on the desk. “Money is a factor of stability in the end. It will give the county the needed immunity.”
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