Yasin al-Hashimi was an Iraqi military officer and politician who twice served as Prime Minister of Iraq. Like many of Iraq's early leaders,al-Hashimi served as a military officer during the Ottoman control of the country. He made his political debut under the government of his predecessor,Jafar al-Askari,and replaced him as prime minister shortly after,in August 1924. Al-Hashimi served for ten months before he was replaced,in turn by Abdul Muhsin al-Sa'dun. Over the next ten years he filled a variety of governmental positions finally returning to the office of prime minister in March 1935. On 30 October 1936,Hashimi became the first Iraqi prime minister to be deposed in a coup,which was led by General Bakr Sidqi and a coalition of ethnic minorities. Unlike al-Askari,who was then his minister of defense,al-Hashimi survived the coup and made his way to Beirut,Lebanon,where he died three months later. His older brother and close ally,Taha al-Hashimi,served as Prime Minister of Iraq in 1941.
Muhammad Mustafa Mero was a Syrian politician who served as Prime Minister of Syria from 7 March 2000 to 10 September 2003.
Abdul Halim Khaddam was a Syrian politician who served as interim President of Syria in 2000. He also was Vice President of Syria and the Syrian High Commissioner to Lebanon from 1984 to 2005. He was a long known loyalist of Hafez al-Assad. He resigned from his position and left the country in 2005 in protest against certain policies of Hafez's son and successor,Bashar al-Assad. He accumulated substantial wealth while in office:a Credit Suisse account in his name,opened in 1994,had nearly 90 million Swiss francs in September 2003,per Suisse secrets. This puts Khaddam and his family's net worth at $1.1 billion,making them one of the wealthiest and most influential political families in the Middle East.
Khalid al-Azm was a Syrian politician and five-time interim Prime Minister,as well as Acting President from 4 April to 16 September 1941. He was a member of one of the most prominent political families in Syria,al-Azm,and the son of an Ottoman minister of religious affairs.
Jarabulus is a Syrian city administratively belonging to Aleppo Governorate,under the de facto control of the Syrian Opposition. Jarabulus lies on the western bank of the Euphrates and north of Lake Assad,just south of the Syria–Turkey border and the Turkish town of Karkamış. In the 2004 census,the city had a population of 11,570. The population has increased significantly during the Syrian civil war.
Riyad Farid Hijab is a Syrian politician. He was Prime Minister of Syria from June to August 2012,serving under President Bashar al-Assad. From 2011 to 2012,he was Minister of Agriculture.
The Free Syrian Army is a big-tent coalition of decentralized Syrian opposition rebel groups 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.
Riad Mousa al-Asaad is a Syrian military officer and politician who is the founding leader of the Free Syrian Army. One of the prominent faces of the Syrian Civil War,he led the armed resistance to the Assad regime as commander-in-chief of FSA,during the early phase of the Syrian Civil War. Under Riad al-Asaad's command,FSA expanded into a paramilitary force of 75,000 guerilla fighters and insurgents in March 2012;capable of ousting regime forces from Damascus. He currently serves as the Deputy Prime Minister for Military Affairs of the Syrian Salvation Government,a position he has held since 2 November 2017. He was a former Colonel in the Syrian Air Force who defected to the opposition in July 2011 and became the first Acting Commander-in-chief of the Free Syrian Army.
The Syrian opposition,also known as the Syrian revolutionaries is an umbrella term for the groups that opposed the Assad regime in Syria. In July 2011,at the beginning of the Syrian civil war,defectors from the Syrian Arab Armed Forces formed the Free Syrian Army,a name that was later used by several armed factions during the conflict. In August 2011,political groups operating from abroad formed a coalition called the Syrian National Council. A broader organization,the Syrian National Coalition (SNC),was formed in November 2012. In turn,the Coalition formed the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) which operated first as a government-in-exile and,from 2015,in certain zones of Syria. From 2016,the SIG was present in Turkish-occupied zones while the SNC operated from Istanbul. In 2017,the Islamist group Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),unaffiliated to the SNC,formed the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) in the areas it controlled. Rebel armed forces during the civil war have included the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army,affiliated to the SIG,the Syrian Liberation Front,the National Front for Liberation,the Southern Operations Room and the Revolutionary Commando Army. Other groups that challenged Bashar al-Assad's rule during the civil war were the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria,and the jihadist organization known as the Islamic State.
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces,commonly named the Syrian National Coalition (SNC),or the Syrian National Revolutionary Coalition (SNRC) is a political organization founded in Doha,Qatar,in November 2012 during the Syrian Civil War in an attempt to coalesce the various movements opposed to Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist regime. Former imam of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus,Moaz al-Khatib,considered a moderate,was elected the president of the coalition,and resigned on 21 April 2013. Riad Seif and Suheir Atassi,both prominent democracy activists and the latter a secular human rights advocate,were elected vice presidents. The post of a third vice president will remain vacant for a Kurdish figure to be elected. Mustafa Sabbagh was elected as the coalition's secretary-general. The coalition has a council of 114 seats,though not all of them are filled.
Ghassan Hitto is a Syrian politician and the first head of the interim government established by the Syrian opposition National Coalition. Born in Damascus into a Kurdish family,he left Syria to the U.S. in 1980,became a naturalized American citizen and worked as an information technology executive and lived in Texas until recently. In late 2012,he relocated to Turkey. He was elected prime minister on 18 March 2013 by a narrow margin over former Syrian Arab Republic agricultural minister Assad Mustafa. Hitto resigned on 8 July 2013.
The Syrian Interim Government (SIG) is an alternative government in Syria,formed by the umbrella opposition group,the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (SNC) and claims to be the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. The Syrian Interim Government constitute a separate administration in Turkish-controlled territories in northern Syria and has partial authority there. The interim government's headquarters in Syria are located in the city of Azaz in Aleppo Governorate.
A number of states and armed groups have involved themselves in the Syrian civil war (2011–present) as belligerents. The main groups were the Syrian Arab Republic and allies,the Syrian opposition and allies,Al-Qaeda and affiliates,Islamic State,and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2016. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
The Mu'tasim Division,formerly the Mutasim Brigade,is a Free Syrian Army faction active in the northern Aleppo Governorate,based in the town of Mare'. The group was named after al-Mu'tasim,an Abbasid caliph.
Anas al-Abdah or Anas Al-Adbah born 1967) is a Syrian politician who served as President of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces from 2019 to 2021.
Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),also referred to as Tahrir al-Sham,is a Sunni Islamist political and paramilitary organisation involved in the Syrian civil war. It was formed on 28 January 2017 as a merger between several armed factions:Jaysh al-Ahrar,Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (JFS),Ansar al-Din Front,Jaysh al-Sunna,Liwa al-Haqq,and the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. The unification process was held under the initiative of Abu Jaber Shaykh,an Islamist militant commander who had been the second emir of Ahrar al-Sham. HTS,along with other Syrian opposition groups,launched an offensive and toppled the Assad regime on 8 December 2024,and now controls most of the country.
The Syrian Salvation Government was a de facto unrecognized quasi-state in Syria formed in November 2017 by Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and other Syrian opposition groups during the Syrian civil war. It controlled much of northwest Syria,and had an estimated population of over 4,000,000 in 2023. Its de facto capital was Idlib.
Sayf Balud,also known by his nom de guerre Sayf Abu Bakr,is a Syrian rebel leader and former military officer who has fought for several armed opposition factions in the Syrian civil war. Having served with the Free Syrian Army during the conflict's early stages,he reportedly joined the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in 2013,possibly as a spy for the Turkish intelligence. He defected from ISIL in 2014,and consequently became the commander of the CIA-supported Hazzm Movement and later the Hamza Division. In September 2021,he became the deputy leader of the Syrian Front for Liberation. As part of these groups,he has become an important ally of Turkey within the armed Syrian opposition. He also acts as the de facto military governor of al-Bab since 2017.
Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali is a Syrian politician and civil engineer who served as the 69th prime minister of Syria from 14 September to 10 December 2024. He is the last person to serve as Prime Minister of Syria under president Bashar al-Assad.
