Syria's estimated population is at about 22 ±.5 million permanent inhabitants, which include 21,124,000 Syrians, Refugees of Iraq (1,300,000), Palestinian refugees (543,400), and Somalia (5,200). Syrian Civil War makes an accurate count of the Syrian population difficult, as the Syrian refugees (5,625,871), internally displaced Syrians and casualty numbers in flux. The CIA World Factbook showed an estimated 19,454,263 people as of July 2018.
The Syrian Arab Armed Forces are the military forces of the Syrian Arab Republic. They consist of the Syrian Arab Army, Syrian Arab Navy, Syrian Arab Air Force, Syrian Arab Air Defense Force, and several paramilitary forces, such as the National Defence Force. According to the Syrian constitution, the President of Syria is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
The Kurdish population of Syria is that country's largest ethnic minority, comprising between 7% and 10% of the country's population according to most sources.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, officially known as the Islamic State (IS) and also known by its Arabic-language acronym Daesh, is a Salafi jihadist militant group and a former unrecognised proto-state that follows a fundamentalist, Salafi doctrine of Sunni Islam. ISIL gained global prominence in early 2014 when it drove Iraqi government forces out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, 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 Ba'athist Syrian Arab Republic led by President Bashar al-Assad, along with domestic and foreign allies, and various domestic and foreign forces opposing both the Syrian government and each other in varying combinations. The war is currently the second deadliest of the 21st century.
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.
Estimates of deaths in the Syrian Civil War, per opposition activist groups, vary between 371,222 and more than 570,000. On 23 April 2016, the United Nations and Arab League Envoy to Syria put out an estimate of 400,000 that had died in the war. Based on Syria's pre-war population of 20.8 million from 2011, this represented approximately 2% of Syria's pre-war population.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES), often referred to 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. While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any international state or organization. Northeastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians and Circassians.
The Syrian Interim Government is an alternative government in Syria, which was formed by the umbrella opposition group National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. The interim government indirectly controls some areas of the country and claims to be the sole legitimate government on behalf of the Syrian Opposition in defiance of the Council of Ministers of Ba'athist Syria. The Interim Government is seated in exile in Turkey. Its headquarters in Syria are located in the city of Azaz in Turkish-occupied northern Syria.
The American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War refers to the United States-led support of Syrian opposition and the Federation of Northern Syria during the course of the Syrian Civil War and active military involvement led by the United States and its allies — the militaries of the United Kingdom, France, Jordan, Turkey, Canada, Australia and more — against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and al-Nusra Front since 2014. Since early 2017, the U.S. and other Coalition partners have also targeted the Syrian government and its allies via airstrikes and aircraft shoot-downs.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, commonly abbreviated to SDF, HSD, and QSD, is an alliance in the Syrian Civil War composed primarily of Kurdish, Arab, and Assyrian/Syriac militias, as well as some smaller Armenian, Turkmen and Chechen forces. The SDF is militarily led by the People's Protection Units (YPG), a mostly Kurdish militia. Founded in October 2015, the SDF states its mission as fighting to create a secular, democratic and decentralized Syria. The updated December 2016 constitution of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES) names the SDF as its official defence force.
Ayn Issa is a town and nahiyah within the Tell Abyad District of Raqqa Governorate in Syria. It is located halfway between the border town Tell Abyad and the regional capital Raqqa.
Liwa al-Quds or the Jerusalem Brigade is a predominantly Palestinian militia (brigade) that operates as a part of pro-Syrian government forces in Syrian Civil War. It was formed in 2013 by the engineer Muhammad al-Sa'eed. The fighters who call themselves the 'Syrian Arab Army Fedayeen' are distributed on the periphery of the camp and south of al-Nayrab military and civil airport. They are also present in Aziza village, Sheikh Latfi, and around the Air Intelligence building and the Greatest Messenger mosque. The group is composed of predominantly Sunni Palestinians from the al-Nayrab district as well as the former refugee camp Handarat. Liwa al-Quds is believed to be the largest loyalist auxiliary force operating in Aleppo.
Kafr Ein, Idlib is a Syrian village located in Khan Shaykhun Nahiyah in Maarrat al-Nu'man District, Idlib. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Kafr Ein, Idlib had a population of 1234 in the 2004 census.
The Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army, officially known as the Syrian National Army or simply the National Army, is an armed Syrian opposition structure mainly composed of Syrian Arab, Syrian Kurds and Syrian Turkmen rebels operating in northwestern Syria. Though concentrated in Turkish-occupied areas, originally as a part of Operation Euphrates Shield, the TFSA also established a presence in the Idlib Governorate during the 2019 northwestern Syria offensive, and consolidated its presence when the National Front for Liberation joined the SNA on 4 October 2019.
Operation Olive Branch is an ongoing military operation conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces and Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA) in the majority-Kurdish Afrin District of northwest Syria. The air war and use of major artillery ended as the Arab and Turkmen militias of the TFSA entered the city of Afrin on 18 March 2018, and the insurgency phase began.
On 7 April 2018, a chemical warfare attack was carried out in the Syrian city of Douma. It is reported, according to medics and witnesses, to have resulted in the deaths of between 40 and 50 people, and injuries to possibly many more than a hundred. The attack was attributed to the Syrian Army by rebel forces in Douma, and by the United States, British, and French governments. The Syrian and Russian governments asserted that a widely-circulated video allegedly showing the aftermath of the attack was staged.
The northwestern Syria offensive, codenamed "Dawn of Idlib", was a military operation launched on 30 April 2019 by the Syrian Armed Forces and its allies against rebel groups in northwestern Syria during the Syrian Civil War in a region known as "Greater Idlib", consisting of northwest Hama, southern Idlib and northeastern Latakia provinces. The Syrian government's main objectives were to open the M5 highway and to expel non-compliant militant groups, particularly the internationally proscribed al-Qaeda linked terrorist group known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), from the 15-20 km demilitarized zone demarcated by Turkey and the Russian Federation at Sochi in 2018. The offensive was seen by both parties as crucial to the outcome of the war.
The Northern Syria Buffer Zone, also referred to as the Safe Zone or Peace Corridor, was a demilitarized zone (DMZ) established on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Turkish border between August and October 2019 with the purpose of maintaining security along the border and dissuading a prospective Turkish invasion of the self-proclaimed Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria during the Syrian Civil War.
The 2019 Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria, code-named by Turkey as Operation Peace Spring, is an ongoing military operation conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian Army in northeastern Syria.
