Mohamad Chatah, advisor to the leader of Lebanon's Future Movement Party, was killed in a Beirut bomb explosion on Dec. 27, 2013.MOHAMED AZAKIR/Reuters
The Middle East can be a terrible, terrifying place sometimes – such as when an innocent man is "renditioned" to be tortured in a Syrian or Egyptian prison, or when a family is killed by masked gunmen for no other reason than they were of a different religion, or when a good person is assassinated by forces wanting to send a message to anyone who opposes them.
Mohamad Chatah was such a person. The 62-year-old advisor to Saad Hariri, leader of Lebanon's Future Movement Party, was killed Friday when a 60 kilogram bomb planted inside a gold-coloured Honda CRV was remotely detonated as Mr. Chatah's car drove past.
The enormous explosion killed six people and sent a very loud message to those in Lebanon, mostly Sunni Muslims and Christians, who oppose the domineering Assad regime in neighbouring Syria and its henchmen in the militant Hezbollah movement that seeks to dominate Lebanon today.
Nearly nine years ago, in February, 2005, another man, Rafiq Hariri, a former Lebanese prime minister, was assassinated under very similar circumstances, killed by an explosion remotely detonated as his car drove by. That blast, which killed 22, took place just a block and a half from where Mr. Chatah was killed. The message then was very much the same: Those, such as Mr. Hariri, who stand against Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, will pay a price.
Mr. Chatah told me last year how proud he was to have advised the senior Mr. Hariri, and his son, Saad Hariri, who succeeded him as leader of the Future Movement Party. In one of a handful of meetings he and I had over the past two years, he said he marvelled at the scale of reconstruction the Hariris had achieved in Beirut following Lebanon's devastating 15-year civil war.
His only regret, he said, was that much of the Hariri vision would likely never be implemented because the country's current political leadership, dominated by Hezbollah and administered by Hezbollah's allies in the Free Patriotic Movement of the mercurial former army chief Michel Aoun, has its priorities elsewhere – establishing Iran's hold over Lebanon through its agents in Hezbollah.
Twice I sat with Mr. Chatah in his splendid apartment beside the campus of the American University of Beirut. Looking out over the Mediterranean, the one-time ambassador to the United States and a representative to the International Monetary Fund told me not to expect the Assad regime in Syria to fall anytime soon. But, even if it did, he said, Iran would continue its hold over Hezbollah in Lebanon.
"Hezbollah is the Queen on Iran's chessboard," he told me; it is "much more important to Iran than Syria is."
Indeed, in the last message he sent on Twitter just an hour before he would die, Mr. Chatah warned: "#Hezbollah is pressing hard to be granted similar powers in security & foreign policy matters that Syria exercised in Lebanon for 15 yrs."
While there was modest security in his apartment building, Mr. Chatah said he didn't feel threatened.
Unlike Saad Hariri, who has spent the past two years in France and Saudi Arabia for fear of being assassinated, Mr. Chatah had no political following and was unlikely ever to be a target, he reasoned. It was a crucial miscalculation by the economist.
Hitting someone without political ambitions or a large following shows just how ruthless his killers were. If a moderate such as Mr. Chatah, someone who champions dialogue and diplomacy, can become a target, are any Lebanese safe?
Hezbollah and Syria deny any role in Friday's bombing, but few believe them.
Last month the Iranian embassy was attacked in the heart of Hezbollah-controlled South Beirut and next month the trial of five Hezbollah operatives begins – the men, who are being tried in absentia, are charged with carrying out the assassination of Rafiq Hariri under orders from Damascus.
Syria and Hezbollah deny any role in that killing too.
Mr. Chatah never believed them and argued long and hard for the United Nations special tribunal and investigation to be held.
Mr. Chatah spent several years studying and working in the United States and came to love this holiday season.
Indeed, when his wife gave a statement to reporters Friday, some noted there was a Christmas tree in the Chatah apartment, unusual for the home of a Sunni Muslim.
Just three days earlier, he had explained the allure of the holiday in a message on Twitter.
"Christmas endures because its warm spirit so magically engulfs everyone, believers and non-believers alike. Merry Christmas to all," he wrote.