Syrian Arab Armed Forces in the context of "Syrian Air Force"

Bashar al-Assad (born 11 September 1965) is a Syrian former politician, doctor and military officer who served as the president of Syria from 2000 until his overthrow in 2024 after the Syrian civil war. 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 1970 to 2000.

In the 1980s, Assad became a doctor, and in the early 1990s he was training in London as an ophthalmologist. In 1994, after his elder brother Bassel al-Assad died in a car crash, Assad was recalled to Syria to take over Bassel's role as heir apparent. Assad entered the military academy and in 1998 took charge of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon begun by his father. On 17 July 2000, Assad became president, succeeding his father, who had died on 10 June 2000. Hopes that the UK-educated Assad would bring reform to Syria and relax the occupation of Lebanon were dashed following a series of crackdowns in 2001–2002 that ended the Damascus Spring, a period defined by calls for transparency and democracy. Assad's rule would become more repressive than his father's.

The Syrian Arab Army is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. Up until the fall of the Assad regime, the Syrian Arab Army existed as a land force branch of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, which dominated the military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the most senior posts in the armed forces, and had the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the combined services. The Syrian Army originated in local military forces formed by the French after World War I, after France obtained a mandate over the region. It officially came into being in 1945, before Syria obtained full independence the following year and 2 years after official independence.

After 1946, it played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting six military coups: two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, and one each in 1951, 1954, 1963, 1966, and 1970. It fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and 1982 Lebanon War) and one with Jordan ("Black September" in Jordan, 1970). An armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally, it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamist uprising in Syria, and from 2011 to 2024 was heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian Civil War, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army had taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.

The Syrian Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة السورية, romanized: al-Quwwāt al-Musallaḥah as-Sūrīyah) are the military forces of Syria.

Up until the fall of Bashar al-Assad's Ba'ath Party regime in December 2024, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces were the state armed forces. They consisted of the Syrian Arab Army, Syrian Arab Air Force, Syrian Arab Navy, Syrian Arab Air Defence Force, and paramilitary forces, such as the National Defence Forces. According to the 2012 Constitution of Ba'athist Syria, the President of Syria was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The Minister of Defense held the position of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces.

The Corrective Revolution (Arabic: ثورة التصحيح, romanized: Thawrat al-Tashih), also referred as the Corrective Movement (Arabic: الحركة التصحيحية, romanized: al-Ḥarakah at-Taṣḥīḥīyya), or the 1970 coup, was a bloodless military coup d'état led by General Hafez al-Assad on 13 November 1970 in Syria. Assad promised to sustain and improve the "nationalist socialist line" of the state and the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath party adopted an ideological revision, absolving itself of Salah Jadid's doctrine of exporting revolutions. The new doctrine placed emphasis on defeating Israel, by developing the Syrian military with the support of the Soviet Union.

Assad would rule Ba'athist Syria until his death in 2000, after which he was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad who in turn ruled until the collapse of his regime in December 2024.

The Ministry of Defense (Arabic: وزارة الدفاع) is a cabinet ministry of Syria, responsible for defense affairs. Murhaf Abu Qasra, Minister of Defense holds the position of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces.

Following the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, caretaker prime minister Mohammed al-Bashir has said the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from the former Ba'athist armed forces.

The Syrian opposition was an umbrella term for the Syrian revolutionary organizations that opposed Bashar al-Assad's Ba'athist regime during the Syrian Revolution and Syrian civil war. The opposition factions in Syria became active as grassroots movements during the mass demonstrations against the Ba'athist regime. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) was the most prominent armed revolutionary group in the initial stages of the war; but it declined and became decentralized by 2015. By 2021, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had become the strongest armed faction within the Syrian opposition.

In July 2011, as the situation turned into a civil war, defectors from the Syrian Armed Forces formed the Free Syrian Army. In August 2011, dissident groups operating from abroad formed a coalition called the Syrian National Council. A broader organization, the Syrian National Coalition (SNC), was formed in November 2012. Although the groups based abroad established contact with those in Syria, the Syrian opposition suffered during the whole conflict from infighting and a lack of unified leadership, as well as lack of foreign aid as the war became deadlocked.

The Free Syrian Army (FSA; Arabic: الجيش السوري الحر, romanized: al-jaysh as-Sūrī al-ḥur) 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 was later used by several different Syrian opposition groups.

The Free Syrian Army aimed to be "the military wing of the Syrian people's opposition to the regime", through armed operations and the encouragement of army defections. In 2012, military commanders and civilian leadership of the FSA issued a joint communique pledging to transition Syria towards a pluralistic, democratic republic, after forcing Assad out of power. As the Syrian Army is highly organized and well-armed, the Free Syrian Army adopted a military strategy of guerrilla tactics in the countryside and cities, with a tactical focus on armed action in the capital of Damascus. The campaign was not meant to hold territory, but rather to spread government forces and their logistical chains thin in battles for urban centers, cause attrition in the security forces, degrade morale, and destabilize the government.