Ghazi Kanaan - Career

Career

Kanaan, as a young military officer, pledged allegiance to Hafez Assad, who seized power in 1970. Kanaan participated in the fight against the Israelis on the Golan Heights in the 1970s. He rose in rank to colonel and served as the director of intelligence in of Central Syria (Homs) from 1981 to 1982.

After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, parts of which were already under Syrian military domination, he was assigned to head the Syrian intelligence in Lebanon in 1982. His term lasted for twenty years until 2002. During this time, he gained a decisive Syrian influence over Lebanese affairs, and gradually subdued the warring Lebanese militias through a combination of diplomacy, bribery and force. During the 1980s, he developed collaborators with the predominantly Christian and previously anti-Syrian Lebanese Forces (LF) militia, including Elie Hobeika and Samir Geagea. After Israel's withdrawal from its occupation of southern Lebanon in 2000, Kanaan extended Syria's influence there, and backed the Hezbollah movement's takeover of the area. Syria established an absolute power in the elections of 1992, 1996 and 2000 through Kanaan. On behalf of Syrian government, he vetoed the anti-Syrian candidates, urged the political leaders to include pro-Syrian candidates in their candidate lists, and balanced the number of religious candidates with secular ones in some districts. On the other hand, the head of Lebanon's Sureté Générale (General Security Directorate), Jamil al Sayyed, reported directly to Kanaan, often bypassing the civilian leadership of the Lebanese regime. Kanaan became the most feared man in the Lebanon during his term, since he had the power to order the arrest and indefinite detention of anyone.

In 2000, the widow and children of Ira Weinstein who was killed in a February 1996 Hamas suicide bombing, filed a lawsuit against him as the head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon and then Syrian Defense Minister Mustafa Tlass charging that they were responsible for providing the perpetrators with material resources and training.

After being an early backer of Syrian president Bashar Assad as a successor to his father, Kanaan was in 2002 summoned back to Damascus to become the head of Syria's political security, which was viewed by the eyes of many as a "demotion". He was succeeded in Lebanon by Rustum Ghazali. In 2004, after a string of bombings targeting leading Hamas members given sanctuary in Syria, claimed by Syria to have been the work of Israeli intelligence, Kanaan was assigned by president Assad to the cabinet post of interior minister in 2004, another "demotion" where he could be fired anytime as by a cabinet reshuffle. On the internal Syrian political scene, Kanaan was considered close to the president, although at the same time part of the "old guard" of Syrian politics.

On 30 June 2005, the United States, which had been pressuring Syria over the Hariri bombing and to end Syrian occupation, declared that it would freeze all assets belonging to Kanaan and Ghazali, due to their involvement with the occupation of Lebanon, and also due to suspicions of "corrupt activities".

Kanaan was not regarded as a member of Bashir Assad's inner circle. He was known to have close links with the former vice president, Abdul Halim Khaddam who had been sacked in 2005 summer. Some believed that they both might have developed a challenging powerbase within the Ba'ath party against Bashar Assad in future.