The siege of Rastan and Talbiseh was an operation by the Syrian Army during the Syrian revolution. On 28 May 2011, after protests and an armed revolt, the Syrian Army launched an operation in al-Rastan, a city of an estimated 50,000 residents located 20 kilometers north of Homs, and the neighboring town of Talbiseh, which resulted in the suppression of the protests and numerous deaths. The Syrian Army met some armed opposition during the siege.
The Free Syrian Army is a big-tent coalition of decentralized resistance militias in the Syrian civil war founded on 29 July 2011 by Colonel Riad al-Asaad and six officers who defected from the Syrian Armed Forces. The officers announced that the immediate priority of the Free Syrian Army was to safeguard the lives of protestors and civilians from the deadly crackdown by Bashar al-Assad's security apparatus; with the ultimate goal of accomplishing the objectives of the Syrian revolution, namely, the end to the decades-long reign of the ruling al-Assad family. In late 2011, the FSA was the main Syrian military defectors group. Initially a formal military organization at its founding, its original command structure dissipated by 2016, and the FSA identity has since been used by various Syrian opposition groups.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian uprising from September to December 2011. This period saw the uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the ongoing crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.
The siege of Homs was a military confrontation between the Syrian military and the Syrian opposition in the city of Homs, a major rebel stronghold during the Syrian Civil War. The siege lasted three years from May 2011 to May 2014, and ultimately resulted in an opposition withdrawal from the city.
The 2011–2013 Daraa Governorate clashes are a series of military confrontations between the Syrian Army and the Free Syrian Army in Daraa Governorate, Syria, which began in November 2011, after widescale protests and crackdown on protesters in Daraa had lasted since April 2011. The clashes had been ongoing as part of the Syrian civil war, until the U.N. brokered cease fire came into effect on 14 April 2012. Sporadic clashes continued since then, however.
The Rif Dimashq clashes were a series of unrests and armed clashes in and around Damascus, the capital of Syria, from November 2011 until a stalemate in March 2012. The violence was part of the wider early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war. Large pro-government and anti-government protests took place in the suburbs and center of Damascus, with the situation escalating when members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) started attacking military targets in November.
The September 2011 – March 2012 Idlib Governorate clashes were the violent incidents that took place in Idlib Governorate, a province of Syria, from September 2011 and prior to the April 2012 Idlib Governorate Operation.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2012, during which time the spate of protests that began in January 2011 lasted into another calendar year. An Arab League monitoring mission ended in failure as Syrian troops and anti-government militants continued to do battle across the country and the Syrian government prevented foreign observers from touring active battlefields, including besieged opposition strongholds. A United Nations-backed ceasefire brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan met a similar fate, with unarmed UN peacekeepers' movements tightly controlled by the government and fighting.
The Battle of Zabadani took place in January through February 2012, during the Syrian Civil War. During the initial stages of the battle, the rebel FSA took control of the town. However, less than a month later, the Army retook control of Zabadani, forcing rebel fighters to withdraw towards the Lebanese border.
The Battle of Douma was a military engagement during the Syrian Civil War. The battle began on 21 January 2012, after Free Syrian Army fighters changed their tactics from attack and retreat guerrilla warfare in the suburbs of Damascus to all-out assault on army units. Earlier in January, the FSA had taken the town of Zabadani, and consequently gained control over large portions of Douma. After a general offensive in the suburbs, Douma was retaken by the Syrian army at the same time as the other rebelling suburbs.
A second battle between the Syrian Army and the Free Syrian Army for control of the city of Rastan took place from 29 January to 5 February 2012. Located in Homs Governorate, Rastan is a city of 60,000 residents. The FSA captured Rastan after days of intense fighting, according to residents and the opposition.
The first of the two battles in al-Qusayr was fought by the Syrian army and Shabiha against the Free Syrian Army in the small city of Al-Qusayr, near Homs, during late winter and spring of 2012.
The Hama Governorate clashes were a series of incidents of fighting during late 2011 and early 2012 in the Syrian Governorate of Hama, as part of the Early insurgency phase of the Syrian Civil War.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from May to August 2012. The majority of death tolls reported for each day comes from the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition activist group based in Syria, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, another opposition group based in London.
The Battle of Rastan between the Syrian Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army took place in the city of Rastan on 14 May 2012, during the U.N. brokered cease-fire of the Syrian uprising.
The Battle of Damascus, also known as Operation Damascus Volcano, started on 15 July 2012 during the Syrian civil war. It is unclear who started the battle. Thousands of rebels infiltrated Damascus from the surrounding countryside. Following this, according to some reports, the opposition forces launched an operation to capture the capital, while according to other reports, the military learned of the large-scale rebel operation beforehand and made a preemptive strike. Some reports even suggested the rebels launched the operation prematurely due to their plans being discovered by the security forces.
The Rif Dimashq offensive refers to a rebel offensive during the Syrian Civil War in the Rif Dimashq Governorate which started in November 2012, and a subsequent attempted Syrian Army counterattack in January 2013. Thomson Reuters described rebels as "ramping up attacks on Damascus" in late November and BBC News described the 29 November government counterattack as "an unprecedented offensive against rebel-held districts in the east of the city".
The 2013 Daraa offensive was a campaign during the Syrian Civil War launched by the FSA in the Daraa Governorate to capture the strategic border area. The offensive began in early March 2013. During the campaign, rebel forces captured several bases and towns. The offensive was eventually halted following an Army counter-offensive in mid-April, which resulted in the recapture of a few towns and villages. After that, the rebels continued their advance by launching a counter-offensive of their own.
The June 2012–April 2013 Idlib Governorate clashes was a series of clashes within the scope of the Syrian civil war, that took place in Syria's Idlib Governorate. The events followed the April 2012 Idlib Governorate Operation by the Syrian government and consequent cease-fire attempt, which had lasted from 14 April to 2 June 2012.
The early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war lasted from late July 2011 to April 2012, and was associated with the rise of armed oppositional militias across Syria and the beginning of armed rebellion against the authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic. Though armed insurrection incidents began as early as June 2011 when rebels killed 120–140 Syrian security personnel, the beginning of organized insurgency is typically marked by the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on 29 July 2011, when a group of defected officers declared the establishment of the first organized oppositional military force. Composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel, the rebel army aimed to remove Bashar al-Assad and his government from power.
Free Syrian Army 
