Abdel Halim Khaddam: A return of awareness or an obituary testimony?

In short, Abdul Halim Khaddam’s statement aims at two fundamental points. Firstly, it is an attempt to disassociate himself from the regime. He mentioned multiple times that he tried and presented many studies on the necessity of party, political, administrative, and economic reform, as well as the launch of public freedoms. He also highlighted the regime’s inability to adopt a reform project, coupled with the accumulation of errors and their dangers, especially in the Lebanese file and the consequences of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. In this complex situation on all fronts, with Syria resembling a pile of straw filled with unignited sulfur matches, he decided to leave Syria in difficult times, choosing the homeland over the regime.

The second point is the conviction that the regime is on the brink of collapse. Khaddam explicitly stated that the Syrian regime was behind the assassination of Rafik Hariri, detailing the series of humiliation, threats, and warnings experienced by Hariri from Bashar al-Assad himself and the surrounding security circle. The danger and benefit of his statement lie in the fact that he spoke clearly, based on facts, mentioning only a fraction of what he knows about the case. The new aspect is that an assassination operation of Hariri’s magnitude is a decision that security agencies cannot execute alone. Khaddam’s words are clear indicators, and they point to who might be behind it. Here, as the saying goes, “he dropped a bombshell.”

Abdul Halim Khaddam said: “Rafik Hariri was summoned to Damascus, and at the Presidential Palace, he heard extremely harsh and humiliating words, going beyond that to repeated levels of explicit threats!”

We must now wait to see how the new head of the international investigation committee will deal with this new testimony in the new year, which is a turning point for the regime’s future. Abdul Halim Khaddam, with his well-known position at the state level, has knowledge of many secrets of the regime.