Beginning in the Spring of 2011 after a violent crackdown on anti-Assad protests, the Syrian Civil War has become either the second or third bloodiest war of the 21st century – depending on the casualties of the ongoing War in Ukraine. Estimates of the dead go as high as 620,000, most of them civilians. Another nearly seven million were internally displaced while 5.4 million fled the country altogether – all out of a prewar population of 22 million.

The dynamic war has seen at least five major foreign interventions, the involvement of dozens of countries, and the rise of the largest terrorist group the world has ever seen.

In the words of Axios‘ news director, the Syrian Civil War “changed everything,” leading to the climax of the Global War on Terror, the rise of populist sentiment due to the refugee crisis, and the further souring of relations between Russia and the West.

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Here is a general timeline of the Syrian Civil War:

Background and beginning:

Hafez al-Assad, an Air Force general belonging to the Shiite offshoot Alawite sect, took power in a 1970 coup. Over the next 30 years, he consolidated his rule with an iron fist, most notably in the crushing of the 1982 Islamist Hama uprising. He staffed the military high command with fellow Alawites, in a majority Sunni country.

Bassel al-Assad was being groomed to be his successor until a deadly 1994 car crash. The death of the popular, vigorous military commander prompted Hafez al Assad to recall his shy, reserved son with no political experience from his studies in London to take his place in the succession.

Bashar al-Assad took power shortly after his father’s death in 2000. He sought to portray himself as a moderate reformer and received an image boost due to his opposition to Islamism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The United States saw him as an ally at the beginning of the War on Terror, often outsourcing the torture of terrorists to Assad’s government. The intelligence garnered by the Assad government “exceeded [the CIA’s] expectations.”

The first major protests began in Daraa, in response to the arrest and torture of 15 students after they painted anti-Assad graffiti. A violent response from the Syrian Arab Army sparked an insurgency in April 2011.

The first main opposition force, the Free Syrian Army, made up of defected SAA officers, announced its formation in July. By March 2012, roughly 60,000 Syrian soldiers had defected to the FSA, according to a report from the Brookings Institution. Turkey took on a leading role in sponsoring the opposition from the beginning, with the FSA leadership largely based in Turkey.

Crucially, most of the military leadership did not defect. This was due in part to the Assad family putting Alawites in most positions of leadership, leading them to fear sectarian violence at the hands of the increasingly radical opposition.

In one key development, the Islamic State of Iraq (later rebranded as ISIS after success in Syria) head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Al Qaeda central command deployed a young member who had fought American troops in Iraq, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, so set up an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria. The Al Nusra Front would be officially launched in January 2012.

Improvised Explosive Device attacks and ambushes soon transformed into coordinated assaults against SAA positions by the SAA. In June 2012, the Red Cross officially declared that Syria was in a state of civil war, after the failure of an April-May 2012 United Nations-mediated ceasefire.

Assad on the ropes, Timber Sycamore, Hezbollah/Iranian intervention

The burgeoning conflict took a major turn in the summer of 2012 when state actors began backing the rebels. The Central Intelligence Agency launched Timber Sycamore in 2012 – a massive covert effort to arm and train Syrian rebels. Jordan, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf countries assisted the program and undertook their own efforts to assist the rebels.

Though Western governments consistently portrayed the Syrian rebels as a secular, progressive force, already in 2012 the more moderate elements were being overshadowed by jihadist and other Islamist factions. By November, the Al Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, was approaching 10% of the FSA’s fighting strength. FSA leadership considered them the group’s best and most successful fighters.

The Al Nusra and other Islamist groups experienced rapid growth as they were consistently the most organized of a disorganized rebellion. Smaller, more moderate groups were pushed to merge with jihadist groups under extremist leadership. By the end of 2012, the Sunni Islamist Syrian Islamic Liberation Front made up half of all opposition forces.

By the end of 2012, the SAA was on the back foot, with rebels holding parts of every major city including Damascus, Idlib, Aleppo, Homs, Hama, and Dier Ezzor. It stepped up attacks on rebel-held areas using aerial IEDs known as “barrel bombs.” SAA airplanes and helicopters would drop the weapons indiscriminately, leading to much of the devastation that would wrack the country.

By March 2013, analysts estimated that the SAA had lost half its strength since the beginning of the rebellion through deaths, injuries, and defections. Rebels took their first major city, Raqqa, in March. The SAA consolidated its territory by abandoning the Kurdish-majority northeast, resulting in Kurdish militias taking control of the territory without fighting government troops. Even after the creation of loyalist militias, it became clear that Assad needed foreign intervention to stay afloat.

The intervention came in the form of Iran, which needed Syria as a vital supply line to its allied militia Hezbollah in Lebanon, and feared for its co-religionists if Sunni rebels took over the country. Large numbers of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps troops and Hezbollah militants served vital roles as reliable infantry, taking on a major role beginning in 2013.

Syria became the center of an international crisis on August 21, 2013, when regime rockets believed to contain sarin gas hit the rebel-controlled Damascus suburb of Ghouta, killing or injuring thousands. The Obama administration previously announced that the use of chemical weapons by the Assad government would constitute the crossing of a “red line.” After weeks of tension, the U.S. decided against military intervention after a Russian-brokered agreement held that Syria would hand over its chemical weapons for destruction.

Rise and fall of ISIS, Russian intervention

On April 8, 2013, self-declared caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced ISI’s expansion into Syria, reforming it as ISIS. After splitting with Julani’s Al Nusra Front over a leadership dispute, the more radical ISIS pulled off a string of stunning victories over the next two years, taking major cities in northern Iraq and Syria. ISIS’s brutal tactics and strict rule drew international attention and condemnation, triggering an international intervention. The group drew the animosity of nearly every faction in Syria, simultaneously fighting against the SAA and allied groups, Iran, the FSA, Al Nusra, other Islamist rebels, the Kurds, the U.S.-led Coalition, and a host of other international foes.

The U.S.-led coalition began its official intervention in September 2014, launching increasing waves of airstrikes. By August 2017, the coalition had launched 11,235 strikes in Syria alone, killing thousands of ISIS fighters. Though the U.S. and its allies tried to find moderate allies to arm and cooperate with the fight against ISIS, the moderate factions of the FSA had declined considerably. Washington instead hitched its air and special forces to the Kurds, which would assist in taking back much of the country’s north, culminating in the conquest of the ISIS capital of Raqqa in 2017.

The introduction of ISIS and the growing power of Al Nusra and allied Islamists brought the Assad regime to an unparalleled crisis by 2015. In July 2015, a joint assessment from Iran and Russia estimated that the Assad regime would collapse by the end of the year. By September, Assad controlled just 26% of Syria.

On Sep. 30, 2015, Russia launched a massive wave of airstrikes targeting anti-government forces all across Syria. The Russian air campaign was much more intense than that of the Coalition and more indiscriminate. General chief of staff of the Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov announced in January 2017 that the Russian Aerospace Forces had carried out 71,000 airstrikes in Syria, several times that of Coalition forces.

The Russian intervention turned the tide of the war in Assad’s favor. One of the war’s largest battles, the Battle of Aleppo, was won by the government in December, after the widescale destruction of the city. By 2018 the SAA had seized the momentum on every front.

Assad was given another boost in January 2017, when President Donald Trump took office. The new president had little interest in trying to salvage the increasingly complex situation, ordering an end to Timber Sycamore. The U.S. effort in Syria was refocused entirely on the destruction of ISIS, a task largely completed by 2018.

The competing goals of the U.S. and Russia saw the two almost come to blows. In April 2017 and April 2018, Trump ordered airstrikes against Syrian government positions in retaliation for Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Despite increased rhetoric from both sides, the conflict never escalated between the great powers further.

Further complicating the war was the direct intervention of Turkey. Turkey invaded Syria in 2016, 2018, and 2019. While the 2016 operation was ostensibly against ISIS, Ankara’s primary interest in Syria was combating Kurdish forces, facing a long-running Kurdish insurgency of its own. The most controversial was in 2019 when Trump permitted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to invade to establish a buffer zone against the U.S.’s ostensible Kurdish allies. 

By 2019, the SAA had retaken almost the entire country, except Kurdish and Turkish-occupied areas in the north, with the last remaining rebel enclave being the Islamist-held Idlib province in the northwest. Al Nusra rebranded into Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) in 2017, eventually publicly cutting its links with Al Qaeda to gain international legitimacy. The group came to control Idlib, holding the last major rebel stronghold.

After Assad launched what looked to be the SAA’s coup de grace offensive, Turkey intervened. The Turkish military clashed directly with government forces, threatening a direct conflict between Turkey and Russia.

Looking to de-escalate, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan signed a ceasefire agreement in Moscow on March 5, 2020. The Syrian Civil War would be frozen in place for the next four years.

Endgame

Though seemingly triumphant, destruction from the war and crippling Western sanctions meant Assad had become completely reliant on Russia and Iran. For independent funding, the government turned to the drug trade. The SAA was largely demobilized, with remaining soldiers experiencing a decline in pay and morale.

HTS and its Turkish-backed puppet government, the Syrian Salvation Government, spent the frozen period building up its forces. It worked to improve local infrastructure and adopted new drone technology.

HTS saw its opening on Nov. 27, 2024. Russia was distracted by its War in Ukraine while Iran and its allies had been devastated by Israel throughout the year. HTS-led forces launched a blitz offensive against SAA forces, quickly breaking through their lines and seizing Aleppo.

Over the next week, the SAA disintegrated, in most cases without putting up a fight. Cities fought over for years fell without a fight. By Dec. 6, the writing was on the wall when a massive uprising began in the south. Assad fled the country on Dec. 8, with rebels taking Damascus hours later.

After nearly 14 years, the main phase of the Syrian Civil War had ended. Fractures between the different rebel factions, government holdouts, and the simmering Turkish-Kurdish conflict could reignite the conflict at any time.