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Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian politician who is the current and 19th president of Syria since 17 July 2000. In addition, he is the commander-in-chief of the Syrian Armed Forces and the secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, which nominally espouses a neo-Ba'athist ideology. His father and predecessor was General Hafiz al-Assad, whose presidency in 1971–2000 marked the transfiguration of Syria from a republican state into a de facto dynastic dictatorship, tightly controlled by an Alawite-dominated elite composed of the armed forces and the Mukhabarat, who are loyal to the al-Assad family.
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist group and a former unrecognised quasi-state. Its origins were in the Jai'sh al-Taifa al-Mansurah organization founded by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi in 2004, which fought alongside al-Qaeda during the Iraqi insurgency. The group gained global prominence in 2014, when its militants successfully captured large territories in northwestern Iraq and eastern Syria, taking advantage of the ongoing Syrian civil war. By the end of 2015, it ruled an area with an estimated population of twelve million people, where it enforced its extremist interpretation of Islamic law, managed an annual budget exceeding US$1 billion, and commanded more than 30,000 fighters.
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided conflict in Syria involving various state-sponsored and non-state actors. In March 2011, popular discontent with the rule of Bashar al-Assad triggered large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. After months of crackdown by governments security apparatus, various armed rebel groups such as the Free Syrian Army began forming across the country, marking the beginning of the Syrian insurgency. By mid-2012, the crisis had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
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.
Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, commonly known by his nom de guerreAbu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was an Iraqi militant who was the first caliph of the Islamic State (IS) from 2014 until his death.
The Syrian opposition is the political structure represented by the Syrian National Coalition and associated Syrian anti-Assad groups with certain territorial control as an alternative Syrian government.
Al-Nusra Front, also known as Front for the Conquest of the Levant, was a Salafi jihadist organization fighting against Syrian Ba'athist government forces in the Syrian Civil War. Its aim was to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad and establish an Islamic state in Syria.
This page provides maps and a list of cities and towns during the Syrian civil war.
Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, commonly referred to as Ahrar al-Sham, is a coalition of multiple Islamist units that coalesced into a single brigade and later a division in order to fight against the Syrian Government led by Bashar al-Assad during the Syrian Civil War. Ahrar al-Sham was led by Hassan Aboud until his death in 2014. In July 2013, Ahrar al-Sham had 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, which at the time made it the second most powerful unit fighting against al-Assad, after the Free Syrian Army. It was the principal organization operating under the umbrella of the Syrian Islamic Front and was a major component of the Islamic Front. With an estimated 20,000 fighters in 2015, Ahrar al-Sham became the largest rebel group in Syria after the Free Syrian Army became less powerful. Ahrar al-Sham and Jaysh al-Islam are the main rebel groups supported by Turkey. On 18 February 2018, Ahrar al-Sham merged with the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement to form the Syrian Liberation Front.
The National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces (Arabic: الائتلاف الوطني لقوى الثورة والمعارضة السورية), commonly named the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) (Arabic: الائتلاف الوطني السوري), or the Syrian National Revolutionary Coalition (SNRC) is a coalition of opposition groups in the Syrian civil war that was founded in Doha, Qatar, in November 2012. 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.
The Authenticity and Development Front is an alliance of rebel groups that is active during the Syrian Civil War. The alliance is considered to be moderate by Charles Lister and the BBC.
A number of states and armed groups have involved themselves in the ongoing Syrian civil war as belligerents.
Tarkhan Tayumurazovich Batirashvili, known by his nom de guerreAbu Omar al-Shishani or Omar al-Shishani, was a Georgian-Chechen jihadist who served as a commander for the Islamic State, and was previously a sergeant in the Georgian Army.
The inter-rebel conflict during the Syrian Civil War has continued throughout the Syrian Civil War as factions of the Syrian opposition and Free Syrian Army have fought each other, with shifting alliances among various Islamist factions such as Jabhat al Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and the Islamic Front.
The Sham Legion is an alliance of Sunni Islamist rebel groups formed in March 2014, during the Syrian Civil War. The alliance was formed from 19 different groups, some of which were previously affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria and the Shields of the Revolution Council.
Following the outbreak of the protests of Syrian revolution during the Arab Spring in 2011 and the escalation of the ensuing conflict into a full-scale civil war by mid-2012, the Syrian Civil War became a theatre of proxy warfare between various regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. Spillover of the Syrian civil war into the wider region began when the Iraqi insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) started intervening in the conflict from 2012.
On 22 September 2014, the United States officially intervened in the Syrian civil war with the stated aim of fighting the Islamic State as part of Operation Inherent Resolve in the international war against the Islamic State. The US also supports the Syrian rebels and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces opposed to both the Islamic State and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is a coalition formed by ethnic militias and rebel groups, and serves as the official military wing of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). The SDF is allied to and supplied by the United States–led CJTF–OIR international alliance. Founded in 10 October 2015, the SDF claims that its mission is fighting to create a secular, democratic and federalised Syria. The SDF is opposed by Turkey, who claims the group has direct links to the PKK, which it recognizes as a terrorist group.
Opposition–ISIL conflict during the Syrian Civil War started after fighting erupted between Syrian opposition groups and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In early January 2014, serious clashes between the groups erupted in the north of the country. Opposition groups near Aleppo attacked ISIL in two areas, Atarib and Anadan, which were both strongholds of the fundamentalist Sunni organization. Despite the conflict between ISIL and other rebels, one faction of ISIL has cooperated with the al-Nusra Front and the Green Battalion to combat Hezbollah in the Battle of Qalamoun. By 2018.
References
- 1 2 3 4 ""نوى".. مدخل لدمشق بيد الثوار". Al Jazeera. 5 November 2014. Retrieved 11 March 2015.
- 1 2 "Syria dissident groups still not united". Al Monitor. 5 March 2014. Retrieved 27 March 2015.
- ↑ "The Moderate Rebels: A Growing List of Vetted Groups Fielding BGM-71 TOW Anti-Tank Guided Missiles" . Retrieved 19 October 2015.
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