Syria

Coordinates: 35°N 38°E / 35°N 38°E / 35; 38

Syria (ⁱ/ˈsɪ.rɪə/; Arabic: سوريا‎ or سورية, Sūriyā or Sūrīyah), officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in Western Asia. De jure Syrian territory borders Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest, but the government's control now extends to approximately 30–40% of the de jure state area and less than 60% of the population.

A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including Syrian Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Circassians,Mandeans and Turks. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, and Yazidis. Sunni Arabs make up the largest population group in Syria.

In English, the name "Syria" was formerly synonymous with the Levant (known in Arabic as al-Sham), while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. Its capital Damascus is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. In the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.

Syrian Army

The Syrian Army, officially the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) (Arabic: الجيش العربي السوري‎ al-Jaysh al-’Arabī as-Sūrī), is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. It is the dominant military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the most senior posts in the armed forces, and has 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.

Since 1946, it has played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting five military coups (two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, 1954, 1963, 1966, and in 1970. It has fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six Day War in 1967, 1973, and 1982 in Lebanon) and one with Jordan (Black September in Jordan, 1970). An armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Persian 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 since early 2011 has been heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian Civil War, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army has taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.

Free Syrian Army

The Free Syrian Army (Arabic: الجيش السوري الحر‎, al-Jaysh as-Sūrī al-Ḥurr, FSA) is a group of defected Syrian Armed Forces officers and soldiers, founded during the Syrian Civil War on 29 July 2011 by seven or eight defected Syrian officers. The group defined "all [Syrian] security forces attacking civilians" as their enemies, and said its goal was "to bring down the system" or "to bring this regime down". By January 2016, the FSA consists of "about 27 larger factions, each comprised of an average of 1,000 fighters as well as some smaller units or localized militias", with there being "thousands" of the latter kinds of brigades of various sizes.

On 23 September 2011, the Free Syrian Army merged with the Free Officers Movement (Arabic: حركة الضباط الأحرار‎, Ḥarakat aḑ-Ḑubbāṭ al-Aḥrār); Western observers like The Wall Street Journal considered the FSA since then the main military defectors group. 90% of the FSA consists of Sunni Muslims, but a small minority are (Shia) Alawites and some Druze fought in FSA units. Some FSA units are led by Druze. As for further ethnic minorities, a Palestinian rebel commander in the Yarmouk enclave in southern Damascus in 2012 considered his rebel brigade to be part of FSA.

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Syrian people

The Syrian people (Arabic: الشعب السوري‎ / ALA-LC: al-sha‘ab al-Sūrī; Syriac: ܣܘܪܝܝܢ‎) are the inhabitants of Syria, and their ancestors who share a common Levantine Semitic ancestry. The term also refers to the citizens of Syria, regardless of ancestry, mother tongue, ethnic identity, or culture.

The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Syrian people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years.

The Syrian republic has a population of nearly 17 million as of 2014, in addition to 4 million Syrian refugees. The dominant racial group is the Syrian descendants of the old indigenous peoples who mixed with Arabs and identify themselves as such in addition to ethnic Aramean. The country also includes the following ethnic minorities: Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, Greeks, Kurds, and Turkmens.

The Syrian diaspora consists of 15 million people of Syrian ancestry, who emigrated to North America (United States and Canada), European Union member states (including Sweden, France and Germany), South America (mainly in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela and Colombia), Australia, and Africa.