Syrian Arab Army in the context of "Syrian Air Force"

The Syrian revolution was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from 2011 to 2024 as part of the greater Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nationwide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives.

Despite al-Assad's attempts to crush the protests with crackdowns, censorship and concessions, the mass protests had become a full-blown revolution by the end of April. The Ba'athist government deployed its ground troops and airforce, ordering them to fight the rebels. The regime's deployment of large-scale violence against protestors and civilians led to international condemnation of the Assad government and support for the protestors. Discontent among soldiers led to massive defections from the Syrian Arab Army, while people began to form opposition militias across the country, gradually transforming the revolution from a civil uprising to an armed rebellion, and later a full-scale civil war. The Free Syrian Army was formed on 29 July 2011, marking the beginning of an armed insurgency.

Manbij (Arabic: منبج, romanized: Manbiǧ) is a city in the northeast of Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria, 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of the Euphrates. The 2004 census gives its population as nearly 100,000. The population of Manbij is largely Arab, with Kurdish, Turkmen, Circassian, and Chechen minorities. Many of its residents practice Naqshbandi Sufism.

During the Syrian Civil War, the city was first captured by rebels in 2012, overrun by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in 2014 and finally captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in 2016, bringing it into the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). From 2018 to 2024, after an agreement with the SDF, the Syrian Arab Army had been deployed on the city's periphery as a buffer between the Turkish occupation of Northern Syria and the AANES. On December 9, 2024, it was reported that the city came under the control of the Syrian Interim Government after a deal was reached between the U.S. and Turkey to allow the safe exit of SDF fighters. The pro-Turkish forces' control over the area did not end until the SIG was incorporated into the Syrian caretaker government at the end of January 2025.

The 1982 Lebanon War, also called the Second Israeli invasion of Lebanon, began on 6 June 1982, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon. The invasion followed a series of attacks and counter-attacks between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) operating in southern Lebanon and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which had caused civilian casualties on both sides of the border. The Israeli military operation, codenamed Operation Peace for Galilee, was launched after gunmen from the Abu Nidal Organization attempted to assassinate Shlomo Argov, Israel's ambassador to the United Kingdom. Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin blamed the PLO, using the incident as a casus belli. It was the second invasion of Lebanon by Israel, following the 1978 South Lebanon conflict.

The Israelis sought to end Palestinian attacks from Lebanon, destroy the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the country, and install a pro-Israel Maronite Christian government. Israeli forces attacked and overran PLO positions in southern Lebanon and briefly clashed with the Syrian Army, who occupied most of the country's northeast. The Israeli military, together with the South Lebanon Army, seized control of the southern half of Lebanon and laid siege to the capital Beirut. The Lebanese Forces however, despite their clandestine alliance with Israel, refused to participate in the war against the PLO as their leader Bachir Gemayel viewed any direct involvement as assisting an invading army. Surrounded in West Beirut and subjected to heavy Israeli bombardment, the PLO and their allies negotiated a ceasefire with the aid of United States special envoy Philip Habib. The PLO, led by Yasser Arafat, were evacuated from Lebanon, overseen by a multinational peacekeeping force. By expelling the PLO, removing Syrian influence over Lebanon, and installing a pro-Israeli Christian government led by President Bachir Gemayel, the Israeli government hoped to sign a treaty that would give Israel "forty years of peace".

The Islamist uprising in Syria comprised a series of protests, assassinations, bombings, and armed revolts led by Sunni Islamists, mainly members of the Fighting Vanguard and, after 1979, the Muslim Brotherhood, from 1976 until 1982. The uprising aimed to establish an Islamic republic in Syria by overthrowing the neo-Ba'athist government, in what was described by the Ba'ath Party as a "long campaign of terror".

After 1980, the popular resistance to Ba'athist rule expanded, with a coalition of Islamist opposition groups coordinating nation-wide strikes, protests and revolts throughout Syria. During the violent events, resistance militias attacked Syrian Arab Army bases and carried out political assassinations of Ba'ath party cadres, army officials, Soviet military advisors, and bureaucrats linked to Assad family. Civilians were also killed in retaliatory strikes conducted by security forces. The uprising reached its climax in the 1982 Hama massacre, during which the Syrian government killed between 5,000-40,000 civilians.

On 27 November 2024, a coalition of Syrian opposition groups called the Military Operations Command led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and supported by allied Turkish-backed groups in the Syrian National Army (SNA) launched an offensive against the Ba'athist government's armed forces in Aleppo and Hama Governorates in Syria. Codenamed Deterrence of Aggression by HTS, this was the first military offensive campaign launched by opposition forces in the Syrian civil war since the March 2020 Idlib ceasefire. On 29 November 2024, HTS entered Aleppo and captured most of the city, as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) collapsed. The next day, opposition forces made rapid advances, capturing dozens of towns and villages as government forces disintegrated, and advanced toward Hama and subsequently capturing it on 5 December. This offensive begun a series of offensives that led to fall of Damascus.

The Syrian Free Army (SFA, Arabic: جيش سوريا الحرة), previously known as the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA, Arabic: جيش مغاوير الثورة), and the New Syrian Army (NSA, Arabic: جيش سوريا الجديد), was a United States Army–trained opposition faction in southeast Syria. It was hosted at the US military's al-Tanf base and is now part of the Syrian Ministry of Interior.

Founded as an expansion of the Authenticity and Development Front by Syrian Arab Army defectors and other rebels during the Syrian civil war on 20 May 2015, the New Syrian Army sought to expel the Islamic State from southeastern Syria. In December 2016, the New Syrian Army dissolved, and the remnants of the group formed the Revolutionary Commando Army.

The battle of Raqqa (2017), also known as the second battle of Raqqa, was the fifth and final phase of the Raqqa campaign (2016–2017) launched by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against the Islamic State (IS) with an aim to seize the city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIL since 2014. The battle began on 6 June 2017, and was supported by airstrikes and ground troops from the US-led coalition. The operation was named the "Great Battle" by the SDF. It concluded on 17 October 2017, with the SDF fully capturing the city of Raqqa.

The battle ran concurrently with the conclusion of the Battle of Mosul (2016–2017), which had started seven months earlier, as part of an effort by the CJTF–OIR and its allies to strip ISIL of its regional centers of power and to dismantle it as a state. It continued while Syrian Arab Army and allies began clearing ISIL across the Euphrates, reaching the point of the lifting of the Siege of Deir ez-Zor (2014–2017).

The Syrian Civil War is an intensely sectarian war. However, the initial phases of the uprising in 2011 featured a broad, cross-sectarian opposition to the rule of Bashar al-Assad, reflecting a collective desire for political reform and social justice, transcending ethnic and religious divisions. Over time, the civil war has largely transformed into a conflict between ruling minority Alawite government and the allied Shia government of Iran; pitted against the country's Sunni Muslim majority who are aligned with the Syrian opposition and its Turkish and Persian Gulf state backers. Sunni Muslims made up the majority of the former Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and many held high administrative positions, while Alawites and members of almost every minority had also been active on the rebel side.

Despite this, Sunni recruits faced systematic discrimination in the armed forces and ninety percentage of the officer corps were dominated by Alawite members vetted by the regime; based on their sectarian loyalty to Assad dynasty. SAA also pursued a truculent anti-religious policy within its ranks; marked by animosity towards Sunni religious expressions such as regular observance of salah (prayers), Hijab (headcoverings), abstinence from alcoholic drinks, etc. The conflict has drawn in various ethno-religious minorities, including Armenians, Assyrians, Druze, Palestinians, Kurds, Yazidi, Mhallami, Arab Christians, Mandaeans, Turkmens and Greeks.