The Syrian civil war was an armed conflict that began with the Syrian revolution in March 2011, when 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. The Assad regime responded to the protests with lethal force, which led to a series of defections, the emergence of armed opposition groups, and the civilian uprising descending into a civil war. The war lasted almost 14 years and culminated in the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024. Many sources regard this as the end of the civil war even though clashes have continued into 2026.
The Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad began as an insurgency, forming groups such as the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Anti-Assad forces received arms and training from Qatar, Turkey, a United States-led program, and others. Pro-Assad forces received financial and military support from Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah: Iran launched a military intervention in support of the Syrian government in 2013, and Russia followed in 2015. By this time, rebels had established the Syrian Interim Government after capturing the regional capitals of Raqqa in 2013 and Idlib in 2015. Use of chemical weapons during the war, predominantly by Syrian government forces, was the deadliest since the Iran–Iraq War. The Ghouta sarin attack was followed by unsuccessful international attempts to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons through military action or diplomacy.
In 2014, the Islamic State (IS) seized control over Eastern Syria and Western Iraq, prompting a United States-led coalition to launch an aerial bombing campaign against the IS, while providing ground support and supplies to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-dominated coalition led by the People's Defense Units (YPG). In 2016, Turkey launched an invasion of northern Syria in response to the creation of the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava), while also establishing the Syrian National Army (SNA) to help it fight ISIS and pro-Assad forces.
The 2016 victory of pro-Assad forces in the four-year Battle of Aleppo marked the recapture of what had been Syria's largest city before the war. In Idlib Governorate, the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militia formed the Syrian Salvation Government, a technocratic, Islamist administration that governed the region from 2017 until 2024. Meanwhile, IS was territorially defeated in the Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor campaigns. In December 2019, regime forces launched an offensive on Idlib province, which resulted in a ceasefire lasting from 2020 until November 2024. During this period, there were regular clashes between pro-Assad forces and HTS.
HTS launched a major offensive in November 2024, joined by the SNA. Aleppo fell in three days, giving momentum to revolutionaries across the country. HTS soon captured Hama and began to advance south towards Homs. Southern rebels and the Syrian Free Army launched their own offensive, capturing Daraa, Suwayda, and Palmyra. On 8 December, Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow as Homs fell to HTS while southern rebels entered Damascus. Assad's prime minister remained in Damascus and transferred power to a provisional government. Israel launched an invasion of Syria's Quneitra Governorate (including the UN buffer zone) from its 58-year occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights.
At the Syrian Revolution Victory Conference held at the Presidential Palace in Damascus in January 2025, the new government announced the dissolution of several armed militias and their integration into the Syrian Ministry of Defense, as well as the appointment of former HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa as president of Syria. Later that year, a Druze insurgency formed in the southern Suweida Governorate following clashes with the government and alleged sectarian violence.
Overview
The Syrian civil war was fought by several factions from 2011 to December 2024. The Syrian Arab Armed Forces, alongside its domestic and foreign allies, represented the Syrian Arab Republic ruled by Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist government. As the civil war continued, alternative governments rose in opposition to Assad's rule, such as the Syrian Interim Government (SIG), a big-tent alliance of pro-democratic, nationalist opposition groups whose armed forces consisted of the Syrian National Army (SNA) and allied Free Syrian militias. Another anti-Assad faction was the Syrian Salvation Government (SSG), whose armed wing was represented by a coalition of nationalist and Sunni Islamist militias led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Independent of the SIG and SSG was the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, whose military force is the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a multi-ethnic, Arab-majority force led by the Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG). Other competing factions included jihadist organizations such as the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda's Syrian branch Hurras al-Din (the successor of Al-Nusra Front).
The civil war also served as a proxy war as foreign countries–including Turkey, Iran, Russia and the United States–became directly involved in the conflict, providing support to opposing factions. Iran, Russia and Hezbollah supported Assad's government militarily, with Iran intervening in 2013 and Russia conducting airstrikes and ground operations in the country beginning in September 2015. In 2014, the US-led international coalition officially began conducting air and ground operations–primarily against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda elements such as Hurras al-Din and the Khorasan group and occasionally against pro-Assad forces–and militarily and logistically supporting factions such as the SDF and the Syrian Free Army. Turkish forces occupied parts of northern Syria and fought the SDF, Assad government and Islamic State alike while actively supporting the SNA. Between 2011 and 2017, fighting from the Syrian civil war spilled over into neighboring Lebanon as opponents and supporters of the Syrian government traveled there to attack each other on Lebanese soil. While officially neutral, Israel exchanged border fire and conducted repeated attacks against Hezbollah and Iranian elements inside Syria, whose presence in the country it viewed as a security threat.
Violence in the war peaked during 2012–2017 amid rebel and government ground offensives alongside sectarian and Islamist violence. By 2019 the Islamic State in Syria had been forced into an insurgency after years of territorial and personnel loss due to clashing with most other factions, including opposing jihadist groups, Assad's forces and allies, Kurdish conquest and US-led operations. International organizations accused virtually all belligerents involved—the Assad government, the Islamic State, opposition groups, Iran, Russia, Turkey and the US-led coalition—of severe human rights violations and massacres. The conflict caused a major refugee crisis, with millions of people fleeing to neighboring countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan; however, a sizable minority also sought refuge in countries outside of the Middle East, with Germany alone accepting over half a million Syrians from 2011 to 2019. Numerous peace initiatives were launched since the start of the war, including several led by the United Nations, but fighting continued.
After the 2020 Idlib ceasefire, frontline clashes between Syrian government and rebel forces mostly subsided and the war effectively became a stalemate, although sporadic clashes and minor skirmishes between opposing factions continued. From 2021 to late 2024, Assad was consolidating power and slowly reversing the diplomatic isolation resulting from the war, however this was halted after lightning offensives by opposition groups across the country successfully collapsed his regime and caused him to flee to Russia. The civil war concluded with the creation of a new provisional government which integrated elements of both the SIG and SSG alternative governments. The transitional government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa would go on to experience lower-level fighting within the country in the aftermath of the war, while also overseeing reconstruction efforts and reinventing the country's diplomatic standing.
Background
Assad government
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party government came to power through a coup d'état in 1963 by overthrowing the Second Syrian Republic. A second coup in 1966 ousted the old Baathist leadership of Michel Aflaq, replacing it with a militaristic, hard-left, pro-Soviet regime led by Salah Jadid, causing a split between the Syrian branch of Ba'ath, which supported Jadid, and the Iraqi branch, which remained loyal to Aflaq. Jadid was in turn removed in November 1970 by General Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite who declared himself President in March 1971. This marked the beginning of the domination of personality cults centred around the Assad family that pervaded all aspects of Syrian daily life and was accompanied by a systematic suppression of civil and political freedoms, becoming the central feature of state propaganda. Authority in Ba'athist Syria was monopolised by three power-centres: Alawite loyalist clans, the Ba'ath Party and the Syrian Armed Forces. All three united by their allegiance to the Assad family.
The Syrian Regional Branch remained the dominant political authority in what had been a one-party state until the first multi-party election to the People's Council of Syria was held in 2012. On 31 January 1973, Hafez al-Assad implemented a new constitution, leading to a national crisis. The 1973 Constitution entrusted the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party with the distinctive role as the "leader of the state and society", empowering it to mobilise the civilians for party programmes, issue decrees to ascertain their loyalty and supervise all legal trade unions. Ba'athist ideology was imposed upon children as a compulsory part of school curricula as the Armed Forces became highly monitored by the Party. The constitution removed Islam from being recognised as the state religion and stripped existing provisions such as the requirement that the president of Syria be Muslim. These measures caused widespread furor amongst the public, leading to fierce demonstrations in Hama, Homs and Aleppo organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and the ulama. The Assad regime violently crushed the Islamic revolts that occurred during 1976–1982, waged by revolutionaries from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
The Ba'ath Party carefully constructed Assad as the guiding father figure of the party and modern Syrian nation, advocating the continuation of Assad dynastic rule of Syria. As part of the publicity efforts to brand the nation and Assad family as inseparable, slogans such as "Assad or we burn the country", "Assad or to hell with the country" and "Hafez Assad, forever" became an integral part of the state and party discourse during the 1980s. Eventually the party organisation itself became a rubber stamp and the power structures became deeply dependent on sectarian affiliation to the Assad family and the central role of armed forces needed to crack down on dissent in the society. Critics of the regime have pointed out that deployment of violence is central to the rule of Ba'athist Syria and describe it as "a dictatorship with genocidal tendencies". Hafez al-Assad's nearly three-decade rule was marked by its methods, ranging from censorship to violent measures of state terror such as mass murders, forced deportations and brutal practices such as torture, which were unleashed collectively upon the civilian population. Upon Hafez al-Assad's death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad succeeded him as the president of Syria.
Bashar's wife Asma, a Sunni Muslim born and educated in Britain, was initially hailed in the Western press as a "rose in the desert". The couple once raised hopes amongst Syrian intellectuals and outside Western observers, being seen as a path towards implementing economic and political reforms. However, Bashar failed to deliver on promised reforms, instead cracking down on the civil society groups, political reformists and democratic activists that emerged during the Damascus Spring in the 2000s. Bashar Al-Assad claims that no 'moderate opposition' to his government exists, and that all opposition forces are Islamists focused on destroying his secular leadership; his view was that terrorist groups operating in Syria are "linked to the agendas of foreign countries".
Demographics
The total Syrian population in July 2018 was estimated at 19,454,263 people. By ethnic groups, Syria was approximately Arab 50%, Alawite 15%, Kurd 10%, Levantine 10% and 15% of other ethnic groups (includes Druze, Ismaili, Imami, Assyrian, Turkmen and Armenian). Its religious breakdown was: Muslim 87% (official; includes Sunni 74% and Alawi, Ismaili and Shia 13%), Christian 10% (mainly of Eastern Christian churches—may now be smaller as a result of Christians fleeing the country), Druze 3% and Jewish (uncounted in the estimate, but with few remaining in Damascus and Aleppo).
Socioeconomic background
Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and it accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation's population, mostly people who had connections with the government, and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo. In 2010, Syria's nominal GDP per capita was only $2,834, comparable to sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria and far lower than its neighbors such as Lebanon, with an annual growth rate of 3.39%, below most other developing countries.
The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates. At the start of the war, discontent with the government was strongest in Syria's poor areas, predominantly among conservative Sunnis. These included cities with high poverty rates, such as Daraa and Homs, and the poorer districts of large cities.
Drought
The unrest coincided with the most intense drought ever recorded in Syria, which lasted from 2006 to 2011 and resulted in widespread crop failure, an increase in food prices and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. This migration strained infrastructure already burdened by the influx of some 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq War. The drought has also been linked to anthropogenic global warming, with evidence that human-caused climate change influenced the severity and duration of the regional drought. Some analysis, however, has challenged the relative contribution of climatic changes to the conflict, arguing that other factors played a more important role. Adequate water supply continues to be an issue in the ongoing civil war and is frequently the target of military action.
Human rights
The human rights situation in Syria has long been the subject of harsh critique from global organizations. The rights of free expression, association and assembly were strictly controlled in Syria even before the uprising. The country remained under a state of emergency from 1963 until 2011 and public gatherings of more than five people were banned. Security forces had sweeping powers of arrest and detention. Despite hopes for democratic change with the 2000 Damascus Spring, Bashar al-Assad was widely reported as having failed to implement any improvements. In 2010, he imposed a controversial national ban on female Islamic dress codes (such as face veils) across universities, where reportedly over a thousand primary school teachers that wore the niqab were reassigned to administrative jobs. A Human Rights Watch report issued just before the beginning of the 2011 uprising stated that Assad had failed to substantially improve the state of human rights since taking power.
History
Protests, civil uprising, and armed insurgency (2011–2012)
In March 2011, popular discontent with President Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist government led to large-scale protests and pro-democracy rallies across Syria, as part of the wider Arab Spring protests in the region. Numerous protests were violently suppressed by security forces in deadly crackdowns ordered by Assad, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and detentions, many of whom were civilians. The Syrian revolution transformed into an insurgency with the formation of resistance militias across the country, developing into a full civil war by 2012.
Escalation; Government clashes with rebels (2012–2013)
Rise of the Islamist groups (January–August 2014)
US intervention (September 2014 – August 2015)
Russian intervention; first partial ceasefire (September 2015 – August 2016)
Aleppo recaptured; Russian/Iranian/Turkish-backed ceasefire (September 2016 – April 2017)
Syrian-American conflict; de-escalation zones (April–August 2017)
ISIL siege of Deir ez-Zor broken; CIA program halted; Russian forces permanent (September–December 2017)
Government forces advance in Hama province and Ghouta; Turkish intervention in Afrin (January–March 2018)
Douma chemical attack; US-led missile strikes; southern Syria offensive (April–August 2018)
Idlib demilitarization; Partial US withdrawal; Iraq strikes ISIL targets (September–December 2018)
ISIL attacks continue; US states conditions of withdrawal; fifth inter-rebel conflict (January–April 2019)
New outbreaks of civil war; northwestern offensive; northern buffer zone established (May–August 2019)
US forces withdraw from buffer zone; Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria (September–December 2019)
In October 2019, Kurdish leaders of the AANES announced they had reached a major deal with the Assad government, allowing for Syrian Army forces to enter Kurdish-held towns along the Syria–Turkey border. The deal was part of an effort to resist Turkey's cross-border incursion into AANES territory after US forces withdrew from the area after the collapse of the Northern Syria Buffer Zone. In November 2019, Russia, Turkey and the Assad government established a new buffer zone in northern Syria that deescalated the Kurdish-Turkish clashes. US-led coalition forces regrouped in eastern Syria in continued support of the SDF against the Islamic State insurgency, amid tensions with local Russian forces and Iranian elements in the region.
By the end of the decade, the war had resulted in an estimated 470,000–610,000 violent deaths, making it the second-deadliest conflict of the 21st century, after the Second Congo War.
Stalemate and frozen conflict (2020–2024)
Following the March 2020 Idlib ceasefire, frontline fighting between the Syrian government under Assad and opposition groups had mostly subsided. By 2021, the Assad government controlled about two-thirds of the country and was consolidating power. Although, regular flare-ups occurred among factions in northwestern Syria, and large-scale protests emerged in southern Syria and spread nationwide in response to extensive autocratic policies and the economic situation. The protests were noted at the time as resembling the 2011 revolution that preceded the civil war.
The civil war had largely settled into a stalemate by early 2023. The United States Institute of Peace said:
Twelve years into Syria's devastating civil war, the conflict appears to have settled into a frozen state. Although roughly 30% of the country is controlled by opposition forces, heavy fighting has largely ceased and there is a growing regional trend toward normalizing relations with the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Over the last decade, the conflict erupted into one of the most complicated in the world, with a dizzying array of international and regional powers, opposition groups, proxies, local militias and extremist groups all playing a role. The Syrian population has been brutalized, with nearly a half a million killed, 12 million fleeing their homes to find safety elsewhere, and widespread poverty and hunger. Meanwhile, efforts to broker a political settlement have gone nowhere, leaving the Assad regime firmly in power.
The US Council on Foreign Relations said:
The war whose brutality once dominated headlines has settled into an uncomfortable stalemate. Hopes for regime change have largely died out, peace talks have been fruitless, and some regional governments are reconsidering their opposition to engaging with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. The government has regained control of most of the country, and Assad's hold on power seems secure.
However, major clashes continued between Turkish forces and factions within Syria. In late 2023, Turkish forces continued to attack Kurdish forces in northern Syria. Starting on 5 October 2023, the Turkish Armed Forces launched a series of air and ground strikes targeting the Syrian Democratic Forces in northeastern Syria (AANES territory). The airstrikes were launched in response to the 2023 Ankara bombing, which the Turkish government alleged was carried out by attackers originating from northeastern Syria.
Fall of the Assad regime (2024)
On 27 November 2024, a coalition of opposition groups called the Military Operations Command, led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, launched a major offensive against the Syrian Army and other pro-government forces in Aleppo, Idlib, Hama and Homs Governorates. This was followed by other rebel offensives from the Southern Operations Room, the SDF and the Syrian Free Army which all began seizing Syrian government territory in the country's south and east. On 29 November, rebel forces entered Aleppo as Syrian Army positions collapsed across the country. On 7 December, rebel forces entered Damascus and the next day, on 8 December, Bashar al-Assad was reported to have fled the capital. The Syrian Army confirmed Assad was no longer in power and had fled the country, resulting in the collapse of his regime and ending over 60 years of Ba'athist rule under the Assad dynasty. Assad and his family fled to Moscow and were granted asylum in Russia. The fall of Assad has been said to mark the end of the Syrian civil war.
Syrian prime minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali recognized the transfer of power to the Syrian Salvation Government, which established a caretaker government in Damascus with Mohammed al-Bashir serving as the prime minister. Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the Syrian Salvation Government and emir of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, became de facto leader of Syria.
Belligerents
Syrian factions
There are numerous factions, both foreign and domestic, involved in the Syrian civil war. These can be divided into four main groups.
First, Ba'athist Syria led by Bashar al-Assad and backed by his Russian and Iranian allies.
Second, the Syrian opposition consisting of two alternative governments:
i) the Syrian Interim Government backed by the Syrian National Coalition, a big-tent coalition of democratic, Syrian nationalist and Islamic political groups whose defense forces consist of the Syrian National Army and Free Syrian Army, and