Syrian Insurgency in the context of June 2011 Jisr ash-Shugur operation

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.

The Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad began an insurgency, forming groups such as the Free Syrian Army. Anti-Assad forces received arms from states such as Qatar and Turkey. Pro-Assad forces received financial and military support from Iran and Russia: 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.

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.

Following the outbreak of the protests of Syrian revolution during the Arab Spring in 2011 and the escalation of the ensuing conflict into a full-scale civil war by mid-2012, the Syrian Civil War became a theatre of proxy warfare between various regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. Spillover of the Syrian civil war into the wider region began when the Iraqi insurgent group known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) started intervening in the conflict in 2012.

In 2012, ISI began transporting its fighters, arms and supplies to Syria. In April 2013, ISI renamed itself as the "Islamic State of Iraq and Levant" (ISIL), officially announcing its expansion into Syria. Throughout 2013, ISIL fought Syrian opposition groups, gaining control of numerous hamlets, villages, towns and cities in eastern and northern Syria. In late 2013, ISIL launched its Anbar campaign into regions of Western Iraq and captured Fallujah in January 2014. In June 2014, ISIL captured vaste swathes of territory during its Northern Iraq offensive, culminating in the capture of Mosul. On 29 June 2014, the group renamed itself as the "Islamic State" (IS) and declared itself as a Caliphate.