Warmatrix

The Syrian Civil War is a civil war that has drawn in neighboring states and stateless militants, creating a very complex conflict that is still ongoing, albeit at low intensity.
In 1971 CE Hafez al-Assad grasped power in Syria, establishing a police state that was dominated by Alawites, a minority group among Syria's many population groups. For four decades, the government repressed several uprisings, yet discontent continued to simmer. In the spring of 2011 CE, a combination of an economic crisis and the Arab Spring triggered a series of new protests. When Bashar Al-Assad, Hafez' son, ordered his troops to fire on the protesters, a rebellion started.
Many soldiers defected and some officers founded the Free Syrian Army, a rebel movement. Within a half a year, fighting escalated into a full civil war. The opposition was numerous and enjoyed support from large parts of the Syrian population, which enabled it to seize large areas of the country. Its major problem was that it has been heavily fragmented from the outset.
The Syrian armed forces, originally around 275,000 men strong with an equal number of reservists, quickly lost significant numbers of men to defection, but retained the major part of the heavy weapons, especially aircraft, though much of the equipment was somewhat obsolete. In 2012 CE, the army started to use tanks, artillery and helicopters on a wide scale, trying to conduct a conventional war that it had been trained for. Because much of the fighting occurred inside cities, this advantage had little effect and caused great losses of tanks, armored vehicles and aircraft. The army responded with long sieges of rebel-held cities, starving them out rather than storming them.
During the first five years of the conflict, losses from both combat, defection and desertion halved the strength of the Syrian army. Faced with strong opposition, it was forced to cede half its territory and fall back on key population and infrastructure centers and areas where most of its supporters live. From these areas, it mounted limited offensives, in which regular army and militias fought side-by-side. The presence of civilians in the fighting areas did not deter the armed forces from bombing and even using cluster bombs and chemical weapons. All sides involved show brutality and disregard for the laws of war, killing civilians and targeting hospitals and buildings from the United Nations.
The war sucked in several foreign parties: Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Iran itself and Iraqi, Pakistani and Afghan militias on the government side; al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda and the Kurdish YPG in the northeast and north on the rebel side. Almost every country in the region, including those that have no soldiers in Syria, supports some party with financial, logistical and military aid. In 2013 CE Daesh proclaimed an independent state in eastern Syria and western Iraq, creating a third side in the conflict. The USA and several other western and Arab countries started bombing Daesh, in both countries. In 2015 CE Russia, already a staunch supporter of Assad, moved in to help the government with military force.
Though the Syrian army was completely worn out, Russian and Iranian backing prevented its collapse. This even allowed the army to retake rebel strongholds one by one in long bloody sieges. By the end of 2016 CE the government again held power over most of the country, though parts remained under control of rebels and Kurds, while Daesh had been eliminated as a state. Slowly the conflict descended into a stalemate, with intermittent fighting that looked like it could go on for many more years. Russia, occupied in Ukraine, largely withdrew its forces. Suddenly, in November 2024 CE, the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel movement, which had slowly been building up strength, defeated the Syrian army and toppled the government in less than two weeks. At the moment the HTS holds power, but neighboring countries and other groups keep interfering, each with different objectives. Effectively the war is still not over.