Following World War I, France acquired a mandate over the northern portion of the former Ottoman Empire province of Syria. The French administered the area as Syria until granting it independence in 1946. The new country lacked political stability and experienced a series of military coups. Syria united with Egypt in February 1958 to form the United Arab Republic. In September 1961, the two entities separated, and the Syrian Arab Republic was reestablished. In the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Syria lost the Golan Heights region to Israel. During the 1990s, Syria and Israel held occasional, albeit unsuccessful, peace talks over its return. In November 1970, Hafiz al-ASAD, a member of the socialist Ba'ath Party and the minority Alawi sect, seized power in a bloodless coup and brought political stability to the country. Following the death of President Hafiz al-ASAD, his son, Bashar al-ASAD, was approved as president by popular referendum in July 2000. Syrian troops - stationed in Lebanon since 1976 in an ostensible peacekeeping role - were withdrawn in April 2005. During the July-August 2006 conflict between Israel and Hizballah, Syria placed its military forces on alert but did not intervene directly on behalf of its ally Hizballah. In May 2007, Bashar al-ASAD's second term as president was approved by popular referendum.
Influenced by major uprisings that began elsewhere in the region, and compounded by additional social and economic factors, antigovernment protests broke out first in the southern province of Dar'a in March 2011 with protesters calling for the repeal of the restrictive Emergency Law allowing arrests without charge, the legalization of political parties, and the removal of corrupt local officials. Demonstrations and violent unrest spread across Syria with the size and intensity of protests fluctuating. The government responded to unrest with a mix of concessions - including the repeal of the Emergency Law, new laws permitting new political parties, and liberalizing local and national elections - and with military force and detentions. The government's efforts to quell unrest and armed opposition activity led to extended clashes and eventually civil war between government forces, their allies, and oppositionists.
International pressure on the ASAD regime intensified after late 2011, as the Arab League, the EU, Turkey, and the US expanded economic sanctions against the regime and those entities that support it. In December 2012, the Syrian National Coalition, was recognized by more than 130 countries as the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. In September 2015, Russia launched a military intervention on behalf of the ASAD regime, and domestic and foreign government-aligned forces recaptured swaths of territory from opposition forces, and eventually the country’s second largest city, Aleppo, in December 2016, shifting the conflict in the regime’s favor. The regime, with this foreign support, also recaptured opposition strongholds in the Damascus suburbs and the southern province of Dar’a in 2018. The government lacks territorial control over much of the northeastern part of the country, which is dominated by the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and a smaller area dominated by Turkey. The SDF expanded its territorial hold beyond its traditional homelands, subsuming much of the northeast since 2014 as it battled the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Since 2016, Turkey has been engaged in northern Syria and has conducted three large-scale military operations to capture territory along Syria's northern border in the provinces of Aleppo, Ar Raqqah, and Al Hasakah. Some opposition forces organized under the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and Turkish forces have maintained control of northwestern Syria along the Turkish border with the Afrin area of Aleppo Province since 2018. In 2019, Turkey and its opposition allies occupied formerly SDF-controlled territory between the cities of Tall Abyad to Ra’s Al ‘Ayn along Syria’s northern border. The extremist organization Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Nusrah Front) in 2017 emerged as the predominate opposition force in Idlib Province, and still dominates an area also hosting additional Turkish forces. Negotiations between the government and opposition delegations at UN-sponsored Geneva conferences since 2014 and separately held discussions between Iran, Russia, and Turkey since early 2017 have failed to produce a resolution to the conflict. According to a September 2021 UN estimate, the death toll resulting from the past 10 years of civil war is more than 350,000, although the UN acknowledges that this is the minimum number of verifiable deaths and is an undercount. According to a June 2022 UN estimate, the death toll resulting from the past 10 plus years of civil war is more than 306,000. As of early 2022, approximately 6.66 million Syrians were internally displaced and 14.6 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance across the country. An additional 5.6 million Syrians were registered refugees in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and North Africa. The conflict in Syria remains one of the two largest displacement crises worldwide (the other is the invasion of Ukraine).
" } }, "Geography": { "Location": { "text": "Middle East, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, between Lebanon and Turkey" }, "Geographic coordinates": { "text": "35 00 N, 38 00 E" }, "Map references": { "text": "Middle East" }, "Area": { "total": { "text": "187,437 sq km" }, "land": { "text": "185,887 sq km" }, "water": { "text": "1,550 sq km" }, "note": "note: includes 1,295 sq km of Israeli-occupied territory" }, "Area - comparative": { "text": "slightly more than 1.5 times the size of Pennsylvania" }, "Land boundaries": { "total": { "text": "2,363 km" }, "border countries": { "text": "Iraq 599 km; Israel 83 km; Jordan 379 km; Lebanon 403 km; Turkey 899 km" } }, "Coastline": { "text": "193 km" }, "Maritime claims": { "territorial sea": { "text": "12 nm" }, "contiguous zone": { "text": "24 nm" } }, "Climate": { "text": "mostly desert; hot, dry, sunny summers (June to August) and mild, rainy winters (December to February) along coast; cold weather with snow or sleet periodically in Damascus" }, "Terrain": { "text": "primarily semiarid and desert plateau; narrow coastal plain; mountains in west" }, "Elevation": { "highest point": { "text": "Mount Hermon (Jabal a-Shayk) 2,814 m" }, "lowest point": { "text": "Yarmuk River -66 m" }, "mean elevation": { "text": "514 m" } }, "Natural resources": { "text": "petroleum, phosphates, chrome and manganese ores, asphalt, iron ore, rock salt, marble, gypsum, hydropower" }, "Land use": { "agricultural land": { "text": "75.8% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: arable land": { "text": "arable land: 25.4% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: permanent crops": { "text": "permanent crops: 5.8% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: permanent pasture": { "text": "permanent pasture: 44.6% (2018 est.)" }, "forest": { "text": "2.7% (2018 est.)" }, "other": { "text": "21.5% (2018 est.)" } }, "Irrigated land": { "text": "14,280 sq km (2012)" }, "Major rivers (by length in km)": { "text": "Euphrates (shared with Turkey [s], Iran, and Iraq [m]) - 3,596 km; Tigris (shared with Turkey, Iran, and Iraq [m]) - 1,950 kmdust storms, sandstorms
volcanism: Syria's two historically active volcanoes, Es Safa and an unnamed volcano near the Turkish border have not erupted in centuries
" }, "Geography - note": { "text": "the capital of Damascus - located at an oasis fed by the Barada River - is thought to be one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities; there are 42 Israeli settlements and civilian land use sites in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights (2017)" } }, "People and Society": { "Population": { "text": "21,563,800 (2022 est.)", "note": "note: approximately 22,900 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights (2018)" }, "Nationality": { "noun": { "text": "Syrian(s)" }, "adjective": { "text": "Syrian" } }, "Ethnic groups": { "text": "Arab ~50%, Alawite ~15%, Kurd ~10%, Levantine ~10%, other ~15% (includes Druze, Ismaili, Imami, Nusairi, Assyrian, Turkoman, Armenian)" }, "Languages": { "Languages": { "text": "Arabic (official), Kurdish, Armenian, Aramaic, Circassian, French, English" }, "major-language sample(s)": { "text": "Syria's economy has deeply deteriorated amid the ongoing conflict that began in 2011, declining by more than 70% from 2010 to 2017. The government has struggled to fully address the effects of international sanctions, widespread infrastructure damage, diminished domestic consumption and production, reduced subsidies, and high inflation, which have caused dwindling foreign exchange reserves, rising budget and trade deficits, a decreasing value of the Syrian pound, and falling household purchasing power. In 2017, some economic indicators began to stabilize, including the exchange rate and inflation, but economic activity remains depressed and GDP almost certainly fell.
During 2017, the ongoing conflict and continued unrest and economic decline worsened the humanitarian crisis, necessitating high levels of international assistance, as more than 13 million people remain in need inside Syria, and the number of registered Syrian refugees increased from 4.8 million in 2016 to more than 5.4 million.
Prior to the turmoil, Damascus had begun liberalizing economic policies, including cutting lending interest rates, opening private banks, consolidating multiple exchange rates, raising prices on some subsidized items, and establishing the Damascus Stock Exchange, but the economy remains highly regulated. Long-run economic constraints include foreign trade barriers, declining oil production, high unemployment, rising budget deficits, increasing pressure on water supplies caused by heavy use in agriculture, industrial contaction, water pollution, and widespread infrastructure damage.
" }, "Real GDP (purchasing power parity)": { "Real GDP (purchasing power parity) 2015": { "text": "$50.28 billion (2015 est.)" }, "Real GDP (purchasing power parity) 2014": { "text": "$55.8 billion (2014 est.)" }, "Real GDP (purchasing power parity) 2013": { "text": "$61.9 billion (2013 est.)" }, "note": "note: data are in 2015 US dollarsSyria-Iraq: none identified
Syria-Israel: Golan Heights is Israeli-controlled with UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) patrolling a buffer zone since 1974; because of ceasefire violations and increased military activity in the Golan Heights, the UN Security Council continues to extend UNDOF’s mandate; since 2000, Lebanon has claimed Shab'a Farms in the Golan Heights
Syria-Jordan: the two countries signed an agreement in 2005 to settle the border dispute based on a 1931 demarcation accord; the two countries began demarcation in 2006
Syria-Lebanon: discussions on demarcating the two countries’ maritime borders were held in April 2021, after Syria signed a contract with a Russian company to conduct oil and gas exploration in a disputed maritime area, but the issue was not resolved
Syria-Turkey: none identified
" }, "Refugees and internally displaced persons": { "refugees (country of origin)": { "text": "568,730 (Palestinian Refugees) (2020); 12,435 (Iraq) (mid-year 2021)" }, "IDPs": { "text": "6.662 million (ongoing civil war since 2011) (2021)" }, "stateless persons": { "text": "160,000 (mid-year 2021); note - Syria's stateless population consists of Kurds and Palestinians; stateless persons are prevented from voting, owning land, holding certain jobs, receiving food subsidies or public healthcare, enrolling in public schools, or being legally married to Syrian citizens; in 1962, some 120,000 Syrian Kurds were stripped of their Syrian citizenship, rendering them and their descendants stateless; in 2011, the Syrian Government granted citizenship to thousands of Syrian Kurds as a means of appeasement; however, resolving the question of statelessness is not a priority given Syria's ongoing civil war" }, "note": "note: the ongoing civil war has resulted in almost 5.6 million registered Syrian refugees - dispersed mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey - as of October 2022" }, "Trafficking in persons": { "current situation": { "text": "due to Syria’s civil war, hundreds of thousands of Syrians, foreign migrant workers, and refugees have fled the country and are vulnerable to human trafficking; the lack of security and inaccessibility of the majority of the country makes it impossible to conduct a thorough analysis of the impact of the ongoing conflict on the scope and magnitude of Syria’s human trafficking situation; prior to the uprising, the Syrian armed forces and opposition forces used Syrian children in combat and support roles and as human shields" }, "tier rating": { "text": "Tier 3 — Syria does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so; the government does not hold any traffickers, including complicit officials, criminally accountable for trafficking; no trafficking victims were identified or received protection during the reporting period; government and pro-Syrian militias continued to forcibly recruit and use child soldiers; the government does not prevent armed opposition forces and designated terrorist organizations from recruiting children; authorities continued to arrest, detain, and severely abuse trafficking victims, including child soldiers, and punished them for unlawful acts traffickers compelled them to commit (2020)" } }, "Illicit drugs": { "text": "source country for amphetamine tablets destined for Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Libya, Sudan , and other countries in the Gulf, Mediterranean region, and Europe " } } }