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.
This is a broad timeline of the course of major events of the Syrian civil war. It only includes major territorial changes and attacks and does not include every event.
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 Syrian opposition, also called the Syrian revolutionaries, is an umbrella term for the Syrian rebel groups that opposed Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist regime during the Syrian civil war. In July 2011, at the beginning of the conflict, defectors from the Syrian Armed Forces formed the Free Syrian Army. 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 Syrian Free 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.
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 Ba'athist regime and allies, the Syrian opposition and allies, Al-Qaeda and affiliates, Islamic State, and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Palmyra offensive of May 2015 was a military operation launched during the Syrian Civil War by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on May 13–26, 2015, in an attempt to capture the government-held Tadmur District of the Homs Governorate, including the administrative centre of Tadmur, known in English as Palmyra. The ruins and ancient monuments of Palmyra, which lie on the south-western fringe of the modern city, have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1980. The ruins were part of a desert oasis that was one of the most significant cultural centers of the ancient world, linking the civilizations of Persia, India, China with the Roman Empire through trade. The offensive was one of the largest offensives launched by ISIL, the largest one conducted by ISIL in Syria since the 2014 Eastern Syria offensive, with the result of the offensive increasing ISIL's control of Syria to at least 50%.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to July 2015. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
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 following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from September to December 2016. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian Civil War from January to April 2017. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
The Syrian Desert campaign was a large-scale military operation of the Syrian Army that initially started along the highway from Damascus to the border with Iraq against rebel forces during the Syrian civil war. Its first intended goal was to capture both the highway and the al-Tanf border crossing, thus securing the Damascus countryside from a potential rebel attack. Later, multiple other fronts were opened as part of the operation throughout the desert, as well as operation "Grand Dawn" against ISIL with the aim of reopening the Damascus-Palmyra highway and preparing for an offensive towards Deir ez-Zor.
The Turkish military operation in Idlib Governorate, code-named Idlib De-escalation Control Force activities by Turkey, is an operation by the Turkish Armed Forces which started in October 2017, following the earlier Operation Euphrates Shield. It is the third cross-border operation by the Turkish military, following Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Shah Euphrates.
Al-Tanf is a U.S. military base in a part of the Rif Dimashq Governorate, Syria, which is controlled by the Syrian Free Army. It is located 24 km west of the al-Walid border crossing in the Syrian Desert. The surrounding deconfliction zone is located along the Iraq–Syria border and the Jordan–Syria border. The garrison is located along a critical road known as the M2 Baghdad–Damascus Highway. The Rukban refugee camp for internally displaced Syrians is located within the deconfliction zone.
On 27 November 2024, a coalition of Syrian revolutionary factions called the Military Operations Command led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and supported by allied Turkish-backed groups in the Syrian National Army (SNA) launched an offensive against the pro-government Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces in Idlib, Aleppo and Hama Governorates in Syria. The operation was codenamed Deterrence of Aggression by HTS. This is the first time that opposition forces in the Syrian civil war launched a military offensive campaign since the March 2020 Idlib ceasefire.
The 2024 Hama offensive was a military operation launched by forces of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) and Turkish-backed rebel groups of the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) during the 2024 Syrian opposition offensive, a phase of the Syrian civil war. The operation, which was launched by the Military Operations Command, took place in the Hama Governorate.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian civil war from November 2024. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found in casualties of the Syrian civil war.
The 2024 Homs offensive was a military operation launched by forces of the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG) and allied Turkish-backed rebel groups in the Syrian Interim Government (SIG) during the 2024 Syrian opposition offensive, a phase of the Syrian Civil War. The operation was launched by the Military Operations Command following its capture of Hama on 5 December 2024 during the 2024 Hama offensive. The offensive ended in the city being captured by opposition forces on the night of 7/8 December after government forces abandoned the city.
The Southern Operations Room, also known as SOR, is a Syrian rebel coalition consisting of various Syrian opposition groups that originally operated in the southern provinces of Daraa, Suwayda and Quneitra, though they have expanded to Damascus and Rif Dimashq.
On 7 December 2024, the Syrian opposition group known as the Southern Operations Room led forces that entered the Rif Dimashq region of Syria from the south, and those forces then came within 20 kilometres (12 mi) of the capital Damascus. The Syrian Army withdrew from multiple points in the outskirts. Concurrently with the advance towards Damascus, opposition militia Tahrir al-Sham and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army in the north launched an offensive into Homs, while the Syrian Free Army advanced into the capital from the southeast. By 8 December 2024, rebel forces entered the city's Barzeh neighborhood. According to official state reports in Russian mass media and media footage, President Bashar al-Assad left Damascus by air to Moscow, where he was granted asylum, sealing the fall of his regime.
Salem Turki al-Antri, known formally in his capacity as Emir of the Badia by the honorary name Abu Saddam al-Ansari, is a Syrian military officer serving as the leader of the U.S.-backed Syrian Free Army (SFA). An Emir serving under the Islamic State at the onset of the Syrian civil war, he left the Islamic State in 2017 to join the Free Syrian Army, serving in various FSA units, eventually being promoted to colonel and appointed to lead the SFA on 29 February 2024, replacing Muhammad Farid al-Qasim. As the leader of the SFA, he initially focused on conducting anti-ISIS operations alongside the US-led International Coalition, before playing a key role in coordinating and executing the Palmyra offensive (2024) and the Fall of Damascus, which significantly expanded the area under SFA control, up to 20% of the country.
United States [2] 
Syrian Arab Republic 
Salem Turki al-Antri 