The following are representations of the Syrian Civil War in popular culture.
The Syrian Republican Guard, also known as the Presidential Guard, was an elite 25,000 man praetorian guard unit in the Syrian Army prior to the fall of the Assad regime, and was reportedly at a corps size with around 60,000 guardsmen. It was composed of two mechanized divisions with its main purpose to protect the capital of Syria, Damascus, from any foreign or domestic threats. The Republican Guard was the only Syrian military unit allowed within the capital before the civil war. It was designed to defend the President as well as the major presidential and strategic institutions, including the presidential palaces.
Al-Hajar al-Aswad is a Syrian city just 4 km (2 mi) south of the centre of Damascus in the Darayya District of the Rif Dimashq Governorate.
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 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.
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 4th Armoured Division was an elite formation of the Syrian Arab Army whose primary purpose was to defend the Ba'athist Syria from internal and external threats. The division was considered one of the most combat-ready formations of the Syrian Arab Army. It played a key role in some battles of the Syrian Civil War.
The Battle of Aleppo was a major military confrontation in Aleppo, the largest city in Syria, between the Syrian opposition against the Syrian government, supported by Hezbollah, Shia militias and Russia, and against the Kurdish-majority People's Protection Units (YPG). The battle began on 19 July 2012 and was part of the ongoing Syrian Civil War. A stalemate that had been in place for four years finally ended in July 2016, when Syrian government troops closed the rebels' last supply line into Aleppo with the support of Russian airstrikes. In response, rebel forces launched unsuccessful counteroffensives in September and October that failed to break the siege; in November, government forces embarked on a decisive campaign that resulted in the recapture of all of Aleppo by December 2016. The Syrian government victory was widely seen as a turning point in Syria's civil war.
This page provides maps and a list of cities and towns during the Syrian civil war.
A number of states and armed groups have involved themselves in the Syrian civil war (2011–present) as belligerents. The main groups are the Syrian Arab Republic and allies, the Syrian opposition and allies, Al-Qaeda and affiliates, Islamic State, and the originally mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian civil war from August to December 2014. 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 August to December 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 July 2014. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian Civil War.
On 30 September 2015, Russia launched a military intervention in Syria after a request by the government of Bashar al-Assad for military support in its fight against the Syrian opposition and Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian civil war. The intervention was kick-started by extensive air strikes across Syria, focused on attacking opposition strongholds of the Free Syrian Army along with the rebel coalition of the Revolutionary Command Council and Sunni militant groups under the Army of Conquest coalition. In line with Syrian government propaganda which denounces all armed resistance to its rule as "terrorism"; Syrian military chief Ali Abdullah Ayoub depicted Russian airstrikes as facilitating their campaign against terrorism. Russian special operations forces, military advisors and private military contractors like the Wagner Group were also sent to Syria to support the Assad regime, which was on the verge of collapse. Prior to the intervention, Russian involvement had been heavily invested in providing Assad with diplomatic cover and propping up the Syrian Armed Forces with billions of dollars of arms and equipment. In December 2017, the Russian government announced that its troops would be deployed to Syria permanently.
The White Helmets, officially known as Syrian Civil Defence, is a volunteer organisation that operates in parts of opposition-controlled Syria and in Turkey. Formed in 2014 during the Syrian Civil War, the majority of the volunteers' activity in Syria consists of medical evacuation, urban search and rescue in response to bombing, evacuation of civilians from danger areas, and essential service delivery. As of April 2018, the organisation said it had saved about 114,000 lives, and that 204 of its members had lost their lives while performing their duties. They assert their impartiality in the Syrian conflict.
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.
Diana Darke is an author, Middle East cultural writer, Arabist and occasional BBC broadcaster. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, the Financial Times, the Sunday Times, the Daily Telegraph and Al Araby. She graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1977, where she studied German and Philosophy/Arabic, then went on to work for the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and Racal Electronics Plc as an Arabic consultant. In 2005, Darke purchased a 17th-century courtyard house in the Old City of Damascus.
The 2012–2013 escalation of the Syrian Civil War refers to the third phase of the Syrian Civil War, which gradually escalated from a UN-mediated cease fire attempt during April–May 2012 and deteriorated into radical violence, escalating the conflict level to a full-fledged civil war.