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 Syrian troops - stationed in Lebanon since 1976 in an ostensible peacekeeping role - were withdrawn in April 2005.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). The SDF has expanded its territorial hold over much of the northeast since 2014 as it has captured territory from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Since 2016, Turkey has also conducted three large-scale military operations into Syria, capturing territory along Syria's northern border in the provinces of Aleppo, Ar Raqqah, and Al Hasakah. Political negotiations between the government and opposition delegations at UN-sponsored Geneva conferences since 2014 have failed to produce a resolution of the conflict. Since early 2017, Iran, Russia, and Turkey have held separate political negotiations outside of UN auspices to attempt to reduce violence in Syria. According to an April 2016 UN estimate, the death toll among Syrian Government forces, opposition forces, and civilians was over 400,000, though other estimates placed the number well over 500,000. As of December 2019, approximately 6 million Syrians were internally displaced. Approximately 11.1 million people were in need of humanitarian assistance across the country, and an additional 5.7 million Syrians were registered refugees in Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, and North Africa. The conflict in Syria remains one of the largest humanitarian crises worldwide.
" } }, "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": "unnamed location near Lake Tiberias -208 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)" }, "Population distribution": { "text": "significant population density along the Mediterranean coast; larger concentrations found in the major cities of Damascus, Aleppo (the country's largest city), and Hims (Homs); more than half of the population lives in the coastal plain, the province of Halab, and the Euphrates River valleydust 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": "20,384,316 (July 2021 est.)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 growth rate": { "Real GDP growth rate 2014": { "text": "-36.5% (2014 est.)" }, "Real GDP growth rate 2013": { "text": "-30.9% (2013 est.)" }, "note": "note: data are in 2015 dollars" }, "Inflation rate (consumer prices)": { "Inflation rate (consumer prices) 2017": { "text": "28.1% (2017 est.)" }, "Inflation rate (consumer prices) 2016": { "text": "47.3% (2016 est.)" } }, "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 dollarsGolan Heights is Israeli-controlled with an almost 1,000-strong UN Disengagement Observer Force patrolling a buffer zone since 1964; lacking a treaty or other documentation describing the boundary, portions of the Lebanon-Syria boundary are unclear with several sections in dispute; since 2000, Lebanon has claimed Shab'a Farms in the Golan Heights; 2004 Agreement and pending demarcation would settle border dispute with Jordan
" }, "Refugees and internally displaced persons": { "refugees (country of origin)": { "text": "13,311 (Iraq) (2019); 562,312 (Palestinian Refugees) (2020)" }, "IDPs": { "text": "6.7 million (ongoing civil war since 2011) (2020)" }, "stateless persons": { "text": "160,000 (2019); 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 nearly 5.6 million registered Syrian refugees - dispersed in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey - as of February 2021" }, "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": "a transit point for opiates, hashish, and cocaine bound for regional and Western markets; weak anti-money-laundering controls and bank privatization may leave it vulnerable to money laundering" } } }