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Damascus is the capital of Syria, the oldest capital in the world and, according to some, the fourth holiest city in Islam.
The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is equivalent to a stretch of land bordering the Mediterranean in southwestern Asia, i.e. the historical region of Syria, which includes present-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine and most of Turkey southwest of the middle Euphrates. Its overwhelming characteristic is that it represents the land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. In its widest historical sense, the Levant included all of the Eastern Mediterranean with its islands; that is, it included all of the countries along the Eastern Mediterranean shores, extending from Greece to Cyrenaica in eastern Libya.
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from 6 to 25 October 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria. The majority of combat between the two sides took place in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights—both of which were occupied by Israel in 1967—with some fighting in African Egypt and northern Israel. Egypt's initial objective in the war was to seize a foothold on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal and subsequently leverage these gains to negotiate the return of the rest of the Israeli-occupied Sinai Peninsula.
The United Arab Republic was a sovereign state in the Middle East from 1958 until 1971. It was initially a political union between Egypt and Syria from 1958 until Syria seceded from the union after the 1961 Syrian coup d'état. Egypt continued to be known officially as the United Arab Republic until 1971.
Aleppo is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an estimated population of 2,098,000 residents as of 2021, it is Syria's second-largest city and also one of the largest cities in the Levant region.
Bashar Hafez al-Assad is a Syrian politician who is the 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.
The Syria national football team represents Syria in association football and is controlled by the Syrian Arab Federation for Football, the governing body for football in Syria. Syria has never qualified for the World Cup finals but did reach the fourth qualification round in 2018. The team is currently banned by FIFA from playing at home, as they have not hosted a game since December 2010.
Roman Syria was an early Roman province annexed to the Roman Republic in 64 BC by Pompey in the Third Mithridatic War following the defeat of King of Armenia Tigranes the Great.
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a Western Asian country located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It is a unitary republic that consists of 14 governorates (subdivisions), and is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. Cyprus lies to the west across the Mediterranean Sea. A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including the majority Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Albanians, and Greeks. Religious groups include Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Yazidis. The capital and largest city of Syria is Damascus. Arabs are the largest ethnic group, and Muslims are the largest religious group.
The Golan Heights, or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant spanning about 1,800 square kilometres (690 sq mi). The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between disciplines: as a geological and biogeographical region, the term refers to a basaltic plateau bordered by the Yarmouk River in the south, the Sea of Galilee and Hula Valley in the west, the Anti-Lebanon with Mount Hermon in the north and Wadi Raqqad in the east. As a geopolitical region, it refers to the border region captured from Syria by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967; the territory has been occupied by the latter since then and was subject to a de facto Israeli annexation in 1981. This region includes the western two-thirds of the geological Golan Heights and the Israeli-occupied part of Mount Hermon.
Syrians, are an Eastern Mediterranean ethnic group indigenous to the Levant. They share common Levantine Semitic roots. The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to inhabit the region of Syria and govern its people over the course of thousands of years. The mother tongue of most Syrians is Levantine Arabic, which came to replace the former mother tongue, Aramaic, in the aftermath of the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century. The conquest led to the establishment of the Caliphate under successive Arab dynasties, who, during the period of the Abbasid Caliphate, promoted the use of the Arabic language. A minority of Syrians have retained Aramaic which is still spoken in its Eastern and Western dialects. In 2018, the Syrian Arab Republic had an estimated population of 19.5 million, which includes, aside from the aforementioned majority, ethnic minorities such as Kurds, Turks, Armenians, Assyrians and others.
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a militant Islamist group and former unrecognized quasi-state that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam. It was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in 2014, when it drove Iraqi security forces out of key cities during the Anbar campaign, which was followed by its capture of Mosul and the Sinjar massacre.
The Syrian civil war is an ongoing multi-sided civil war in Syria fought between the Syrian Arab Republic led by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and various domestic and foreign forces that oppose both the Syrian government and each other, in varying combinations.
The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a loose faction in the Syrian Civil War founded on 29 July 2011 by officers of the Syrian Armed Forces with the goal of bringing down the government of Bashar al-Assad. Initially a formal organization at its founding, its structure gradually dissipated by late 2012, and the FSA identity has since been used by various opposition groups.
The Syrian opposition is the political structure represented by the Syrian National Coalition and associated Syrian anti-government groups with certain territorial control as an alternative Syrian government.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict and the wider Syrian Civil War, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part.
The American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War refers to the American-led support of Syrian rebels and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) during the course of the Syrian civil war, including Operation Inherent Resolve, the active military operation led by the United States, and involving the militaries of the United Kingdom, France, Jordan, Turkey, Canada, Australia, and others against the Islamic State (IS) and al-Nusra Front since 2014. Beginning in 2017–18, the U.S. and its partners have also targeted the Syrian government and its allies via airstrikes and aircraft shoot-downs, mainly in defense of either the SDF or the Revolutionary Commando Army opposition group based in al-Tanf.
The Russian military intervention in the Syrian civil war began in September 2015, after an official request by the Syrian government for military aid against rebel and jihadist groups. The intervention initially involved air strikes by Russian aircraft deployed to the Khmeimim base against targets primarily in north-western Syria, and against Syrian opposition militant groups opposed to the Syrian government, including the Free Syrian Army, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), al-Nusra Front and the Army of Conquest. In addition, Russian special operations forces and military advisors are deployed to Syria. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War had mainly consisted of supplying the Syrian Army with arms and equipment. At the end of December 2017, the Russian government announced that its troops would be deployed to Syria permanently.
The Wagner Group, also known as PMC Wagner, ChVK Wagner, or CHVK Vagner, is a Russian paramilitary organization. It is variously described as a private military company (PMC), a network of mercenaries, or a de facto private army of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Officially the group does not exist. While the Wagner Group itself is not ideologically driven, various elements of Wagner have been linked to neo-Nazis and far-right extremists.
On 7 February 2018, the coalition established in 2014 to counter the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) delivered massive air and artillery strikes on the Syrian pro-government forces near the towns of Khasham and Al Tabiyeh in the Deir ez-Zor Governorate. The United States explained the attack by stating that the pro-government forces had "initiated an unprovoked attack against well-established Syrian Democratic Forces headquarters" in the area, while Coalition service members were "co-located with SDF partners during the attack 8 kilometers (5 mi) east of the agreed-upon Euphrates River de-confliction line". The Russian defense ministry's statement released on 8 February 2018 referred to the incident at the village of Salihiyah and said that it was caused by reconnaissance actions of Syrian militia that had not been cleared with the Russian operations command; the statement stressed that there were no Russian service members in the "designated district of the Deir ez-Zor province of Syria".
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