Syria competed at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, China between July 16 and 31, 2011.
Syria competed at the 2011 World Aquatics Championships in Shanghai, China between July 16 and 31, 2011.
| Athlete | Event | Final | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Position | ||
| Saleh Mohamed | Men's 10km | 1:55:47.6 | 29 |
Syria qualified 3 swimmers. [2]
| Athlete | Event | Heats | Semifinals | Final | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Rank | Time | Rank | Time | Rank | ||
| Azad Al-Barazi | Men's 100m Breaststroke | 1:04.23 | 60 | did not advance | |||
| Men's 200m Breaststroke | 2:19.71 | 42 | did not advance | ||||
| Rami Anis | Men's 50m Butterfly | 26.22 | 41 | did not advance | |||
| Men's 100m Butterfly | 56.47 | 46 | did not advance | ||||
| Athlete | Event | Heats | Semifinals | Final | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Rank | Time | Rank | Time | Rank | ||
| Bayan Jumah | Women's 100m Freestyle | 59.22 | 47 | did not advance | |||
| Women's 200m Freestyle | 2:09.08 | 41 | did not advance | ||||
The Syrian Armed Forces are the military forces of Syria.
Bashar al-Assad is a Syrian politician, military officer, and former dictator who served as the 19th president of Syria from 2000 until his government was overthrown by Syrian rebels in December 2024. As president, Assad was commander-in-chief of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces and secretary-general of the Central Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. He is the son of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Alawites are an Arab ethnoreligious group who live primarily in the Levant region in West Asia and follow Alawism. A sect of Islam that splintered from early Shia as a ghulat branch during the ninth century, Alawites venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, the "first Imam" in the Twelver school, as a manifestation of the divine essence. The group was founded by Ibn Nusayr during the 9th century, who was a disciple of the tenth Twelver Imam, Ali al-Hadi, and of the eleventh Twelver Imam, Hasan al-Askari. For this reason, Alawites are also called Nusayris.
Syria competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece, from 13 to 29 August 2004.
The Syria–Lebanon campaign, also known as Operation Exporter, was the invasion of Syria and Lebanon in June and July 1941 by British Empire forces, during the Second World War.
Major General Maher Hafez al-Assad is a Syrian former military officer who served as commander of the Syrian Army's elite 4th Armoured Division, which, together with Syria's Military Intelligence, formed the core of the Ba'athist regime's security forces until its collapse in 2024. He is the younger brother of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and also was a member of the Central Committee of the Syrian Ba'ath Party.
The Syrian Army is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces.
Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders 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. It is under a transitional government and comprises 14 governorates. Damascus is the capital and largest city. With a population of 25 million across an area of 185,180 square kilometres (71,500 sq mi), it is the 57th-most populous and 87th-largest country.
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 Ba'athist regime ruled by 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 the government's 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 insurgency had escalated into a full-blown civil war.
Rami Makhlouf is a Syrian businessman and a maternal cousin of former president Bashar al-Assad. At the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, he was considered one of Syria's richest and most powerful men. According to Syrian analysts, he was part of al-Assad's inner circle and no foreign company could do business in Syria at the time without his consent and partnership.
In June 2011, during the civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War, rebels seized the city of Jisr ash-Shughur, resulting in violent clashes with the Syrian security forces, including the military. The exact reasons of the fighting, the course of events, and the resulting destruction and deaths are disputed. The government claimed that it clashed with Islamist-leaning insurgents who had set up an ambush for security forces, while the Syrian opposition described the Jisr ash-Shughur clashes as crackdown against pro-democracy protesters, resulting in a mutiny among soldiers and a large battle with many people being massacred by pro-government forces. The fighting in the city lasted from 4 until 12 June 2011.
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.
Syria competed at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, from 27 July to 12 August 2012. This was the nation's twelfth appearance at the Olympics since its debut in 1948. The Syrian Olympic Committee sent the nation's largest delegation to the Games, after the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. A total of ten athletes, six men and four women, competed in 6 sports. Four of them received their spots in track and field, and in swimming by wild card entries. Three Syrian athletes had competed in Beijing, including high jumper Majed Aldin Ghazal, who was the nation's flag bearer at the opening ceremony. Among the sports played by the athletes, Syria marked its Olympic debut in equestrian show jumping.
On 13 August 2011, during the early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war, the Syrian Army and Syrian Navy launched an operation in the Syrian coastal city of Latakia in order to end an anti-Assad rebellion in the Palestinian camp. The operation resulted in dozens of people killed and wounded. Latakia has remained relatively quiet throughout the Syrian civil war subsequent to the operation.
Protests began in Syria as early as 26 January 2011, and erupted on 15 March 2011 with a "Day of Rage" protest generally considered to mark the start of a nationwide uprising. The Syrian government's reaction to the protests became violent on 16 March, and deadly on 18 March, when four unarmed protesters were killed in Daraa.
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 December 2011 Syrian-Turkey border clash was an ineffective incursion from Turkey by armed men into Syria.
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.
Women in Syria are active participants in social, economic and political factions of Syrian society. They constitute 49.9% of Syria's population. According to World Bank data from 2021, there are around 10.6 million women in Syria. However, Syrian women and girls still experience challenges, especially since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. They suffer from discrimination, lack of access to suitable healthcare and challenges precipitated by wartime violence.
The 2014 Syrian detainee report, also known as the Caesar Report, formally titled A Report into the credibility of certain evidence with regard to Torture and Execution of Persons Incarcerated by the current Syrian regime, is a report that claims to detail "the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees by the Syrian government in one region during the Syrian Civil War over a two and half year period from March 2011 to August 2013". It was released on 21 January 2014, a day before talks were due to begin at the Geneva II Conference on Syria, and was commissioned by the government of Qatar. Qatar has been a key funder of the rebels in Syria. The Syrian government questioned the report due to its ties to hostile sides against the Syrian government and pointed to how many of the photos were identified as casualties among international terrorists fighting the Syrian government or Syrian army troops or civilians massacred by them due to supporting the Syrian government.