BIERUT, 22 June 2005 — It was George Hawi, former head of the communist party, mediator between Christians and Muslims, friend of the Palestinians during the civil war and — of course — bitter critic of Syria.

“Help me, help me,” he had cried as he was dragged by his driver and a neighbor from his bombed car. Covered in blood, he died in their arms.

A soft target, a man who thought he had no need of protection. Just like his journalist friend and fellow critic of Syria, Samir Kassir, who was assassinated in his car — the explosives were set in an identical manner — earlier this month.

Hawi’s right shoe lay among the wreckage on the street in the Wata Mouseitbeh area of Beirut, along with pieces of the passenger door. His Mercedes had been passing a gas station near his home when someone — with line of sight, presumably, either in one of the high-rise apartments above or in the parking lot opposite — set off the bomb under the passenger seat and sent the car slithering thirty feet down the highway.

The crowd was angry and the word “Syria” was on the lips of everyone and when I found Ghazi Aridi, Walid Jumblatt’s friend and fellow Druze and former minister of information at the scene, his shock was palpable. “Come with me,” he muttered angrily and walked me away from the broken car. “This,” he hissed, “is the same project to assassinate all the leaders of the opposition, of the future of Lebanon. The big question is this: Why are all the leaders of the opposition now targets?”

And of course, within hours, Syria was insisting that it had nothing to do with Lebanon’s latest assassination, and President Emile Lahoud — Syria’s best friend in Lebanon — was denouncing the murder of this “national” figure as “another chapter of the conspiracy targeting Lebanon.”

But important and devastating events are taking place in this country which are already reaching deep into the roots of political power. For while the assassins were at work yesterday, the UN’s international investigation team began questioning Brig. Gen. Mustafa Hamdan, the head of Lahoud’s presidential guard brigade, about the murder of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14. This was no ordinary chat.

The investigators, who are led by Germany’s senior prosecutor, Detlev Mehlis, also searched Hamdan’s office and his home — a severe shock for the president since Hamdan is one of his top security advisers and one who has been accused by opposition politicians of involvement in the government cover-up of Hariri’s assassination.

The assassination was condemned internationally. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she did not know who was responsible, but “there is a context and an atmosphere of instability” in Lebanon. “Syria’s activities are a part of that context and that atmosphere, and they need to knock it off,” she told reporters in Brussels.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan “was appalled to learn of yet another assassination in Lebanon,” UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.