Syrian Arab Republic - Country briefing

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Country Briefing

Area: 187,437 km²
Capital: Damascus
Population: 23,865,423 (2024 estimate) (CIA, 13 March 2025), including 7.4 million internally displaced persons and more than 6 million refugees living mainly in neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq (March 2025) (UNHCR, 13 March 2025).
Official language: Arabic
Currency:

Syrian lira (also called Syrian pound) (Britannica Online Encyclopaedia, 12 October 2022a)

1. Brief overview

Syria can be divided into four topographical regions: the western coastal strip, the forested mountains in the northwest, the agricultural steppe, in which the most important cities such as Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Hama and Al-Qamishli are also located, and finally the desert region (Britannica Online Encyclopaedia, 12 October 2022b). This desert region, also known as Badia, extends over four provinces and occupies large parts of the centre of the country (MEI, 17 April 2020).

The majority of the population is Arabic, with a Kurdish minority living mainly in the north-east of the country (-> ecoi.net search on Kurds in Syria). There are also Armenian (-> ecoi.net search) and Turkmen communities (-> ecoi.net search) as well as Syriac-speaking Assyrians (-> ecoi.net search) (Britannica Online Encyclopaedia, 12 October 2022b). It is estimated that around three quarters of the population are Sunni Muslims, including Arabs, Kurds and other smaller communities. Other Muslim groups such as Alawites (-> ecoi.net search), Ismailis (-> ecoi.net search) and Shiites (-> ecoi.net search) together make up around 13 per cent of the population. The share of the Christian population (-> ecoi.net search) is estimated at between 2.5 and 10 per cent (USDOS, 26 June 2024). The southern province of Suwayda is largely inhabited by Druze (-> ecoi.net search) (Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, 29 August 2022).

Approximately 56% of Syria's population live in urban centres (Statista, 10 November 2022) and 44% in rural areas. Before 2011, almost half of the population earned their living as part of the centrally planned agricultural sector (FAO, 24 April 2022).

The north-east of the country is seen as a tribal society due to the large number of Arab tribes living there (-> ecoi.net search on tribes in Syria). However, tribes also play an important role in other parts of the country, such as in Daraa province in the south, although tribal ties have lost some of their significance in the course of the conflict (TWI, 26 March 2019).

2. Historical development of the conflicts

In 1946, Syria was released from French mandate rule and granted independence (BBC News, 14 January 2019). After years of political instability, Hafiz Al-Assad came to power as leader of the Baath Party in a coup in 1970 and ruled the country in an authoritarian style for decades (CFR, 11 November 2011). Power remained in the hands of the Alawite Al-Assad family when Bashar Al-Assad, Hafiz's son, took over the government in 2000 (Al Jazeera, 10 October 2011). 2011 saw the first protests for democracy in the southern city of Daraa, which spread throughout the country by the summer of the same year. The government used violence against the protesters (BBC News, 11 March 2016; CFR, 17 March 2021). Over the course of 2012, the situation developed into a civil war that increasingly divided the conflicting parties along religious and sectarian lines (SWP, December 2021, p. 2-3) and resulted in the de facto autonomy of the Kurdish areas in the north-east of the country (known as Rojava or Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, DAANES) (Qantara, 7 February 2022). The Islamic State (IS) terrorist group infiltrated Syria and established a caliphate in eastern Syria and western Iraq in 2014, forcing the Free Syrian Army (FSA) to fight on two fronts against both government troops and IS (Bertelsmann Stiftung, 23 February 2022, p. 5) (-> ecoi.net search on IS in Syria). Turkey carried out several operations on Syrian territory in 2016, 2018 and 2019 to push Kurdish forces out of the border area (MEE, 30 November 2022). With the support of Lebanese Hezbollah and consequently Iran for the Syrian government in 2013, the entry of Russia into the war in 2015 as well as Turkey's invasion campaigns in the north of the country and the US engagement against IS, Syria increasingly became an international battleground (BPB, 18 June 2020). While the front lines were largely frozen by March 2020 (The Carter Center, March 2022, p. 3), the civilian population was affected by barrel bomb attacks by the regime on residential areas (SNHR, 15 April 2021) and siege tactics by individual parties to the conflict (MSF, presumably 2021). Chemical weapons were also used (UN Security Council, 29 April 2022).

According to the United Nations in May 2023, almost 307,000 civilians were killed between the start of the war and 2022 (OHCHR, 11 May 2023). The Syrian opposition watchdog Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimates a much higher number of victims and states that around 606,000 people have been killed over the ten years of the war (SOHR, 1 June 2021). According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), as of March 2023, over 230,000 Syrian civilians have been killed since the start of the war, more than 15,000 of them through torture. A further 155,000 have been arbitrarily detained or subjected to enforced disappearance and around 14 million have been displaced, according to SNHR (SNHR, 15 March 2023).

The years of conflict, the major earthquake in 2023, economic instability in Lebanon and Turkey, the war in Ukraine, as well as the introduction of stricter US sanctions and a severe drought in the country led to a problematic economic situation in the country (World Bank, Summer 2023, p.7).

On 27 November 2024, the militant Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), whose control had previously been limited to parts of the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, launched a major offensive in north-west Syria with allied rebel factions. The rebels first captured Aleppo, followed by Hama and Homs (BBC News, 9 December 2024). Meanwhile, rebel forces from southern Syria advanced into the city of Daraa and gained control of more than 90 per cent of the province, while government forces gradually withdrew (Rudaw, 7 December 2024). On 8 December 2024, the rebels declared victory in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad left the country on the same day and applied for asylum in Russia, where he was granted asylum (Tagesschau, 8 December 2024). HTS then took de facto control as the ruling party and set up a transitional government (Al Jazeera, 29 January 2025). HTS Chairman Ahmad Al-Sharaa, previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani (BBC News, 16 December 2024), took de facto power in Syria in early December and was appointed interim president on 29 January 2025 (The Guardian, 29 January 2025). Further information on the developments surrounding the fall of President Assad can be found here.

According to the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, unrest continues in the coastal regions, Homs and Hama in early 2025. Armed groups, including the Islamic State group - and over 60 groups with sometimes conflicting agendas - pose an ongoing threat to Syria's territorial integrity. There is also an ongoing conflict between the DAANES Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA); and Israeli airstrikes and violations of the 1974 disengagement agreement on the Golan raise concerns about Syria's sovereignty, according to the Special Envoy. The humanitarian situation also remained critical: almost 15 million Syrians were in need of health care, 13 million were affected by acute food insecurity (UN News, 8 January 2025) and the number of newly displaced people due to escalating violence rose to 652,000 by the end of January 2025 (UN News, 30 January 2025).

3. Regions and conflict actors

The transitional government of Ahmad Al-Sharaa controls most of Syria's western cities and rural areas (-> ecoi.net search on transitional government). In the south, forces under the leadership of former rebel Ahmad Al-Awda (-> ecoi.net search for Daraa) and other factions (-> ecoi.net search for Suwayda) are resisting integration into the new Syrian army. In the north, the pro-Turkish Syrian National Army (SNA) holds the areas around Afrin and Jarabulus as well as between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ain under its control (-> ecoi.net search for SNA). The north-east of Syria continues to be controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) (who are in talks with Al-Sharaa) (-> ecoi.net search on SDF) (TWI, 28 February 2025).

The US research organisations Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Critical Threats (CT) publish a regularly updated map showing the areas under the control of the various parties to the conflict in Syria on the following website:

ISW - Institute for the Study of War und CT – Critical Threats: Interactive Map: Assessed Control of Terrain in Syria, 25 March 2025
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/1933cb1d315f4db3a4f4dcc5ef40753a

Sources

Table of contents

1. Brief overview

2. Historical development of the conflicts

3. Regions and actors

Cite as

ACCORD – Austrian Centre for Country of Origin and Asylum Research and Documentation: ecoi.net: Syrian Arab Republic - Country Briefing, 27 March 2025
https://www.ecoi.net/en/countries/syrian-arab-republic/briefing/

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