Syrian Armed Forces
The Syrian Armed Forces are the military forces of Syria. They consist of the Syrian Army, Syrian Air Force and Syrian Navy. According to Article 32 of the Constitutional Declaration of the Syrian Arab Republic, the President of Syria serves as the Commander-in-chief of the Army and the Armed Forces.
After 1943, the Syrian Army played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting six military coups: two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, and one each in 1951, 1954, 1963, 1966, and 1970. It fought four wars with Israel and one with Jordan. The Air Force and Navy acted more as adjuncts to the army than independent actors, apart from the Air Force/ADF's reaction to the Israeli Operation Mole Cricket 19 ahead of the 1982 Lebanon War. Syrian fighters and air defence systems took very heavy losses. An armoured division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 the Army 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 from 2011 to 2024 was heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian civil war, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army had taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.
Prior to the fall of Ba'athist Syria, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces used conscription. Males served in the military from age 18, but they were exempted from service if they did not have a brother who could take care of their parents. Females were exempt from conscription.
The Ba'athist Syrian Arab Armed Forces collapsed in 2024 with the fall of the Assad regime and flight of Bashar al-Assad. Up until the fall of Bashar al-Assad's Ba'ath Party regime in December 2024, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces were the state armed forces. They consisted of the Syrian Arab Armed Forces, Syrian Arab Air Force, Syrian Arab Navy, Syrian Arab Air Defence Force, and paramilitary forces, such as the National Defence Forces. According to the 2012 Constitution of Ba'athist Syria, the President of Syria was the Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, with the Minister of Defense holding the position of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Armed Forces.
After Assad's fall, the government of Syria, the Syrian transitional government, is making preparations to drastically reorganise Syria's military forces and ambitions. On 21 December 2024 it was reported that Murhaf Abu Qasra had been appointed the new defence minister for the interim government, while Ali Noureddine al-Naasan serves as Chief of the General Staff.
History
Mandate and independence (1923–1945)
The French Mandate volunteer force, which would later become the Syrian army, was established in 1923 with the threat of Syrian Arab nationalism in mind. Although the unit's officers were originally all French, it was, in effect, the first indigenous modern Syrian army. In 1925, this force was expanded and designated the Special Troops of the Levant. In 1941, during the Second World War, the Army of the Levant participated in a futile resistance to the Syria–Lebanon Campaign, the British and Free French invasion that ousted the Vichy French from Syria.After the Allied takeover, the army came under the control of the Free French and was designated the Levantine Forces. French Mandate authorities maintained a gendarmerie to police Syria's vast rural areas. This paramilitary force was used to combat criminals and political foes of the Mandate government. As with the Levantine Special Troops, French officers held the top posts, but as Syrian independence approached, the ranks below major were gradually filled by Syrian officers who had graduated from the Homs Military Academy, which had been established by the French during the 1930s. In 1938, the Troupes Spéciales numbered around 10,000 men and 306 officers. A majority of the Syrian troops were of rural background and minority ethnic origin, mainly Alawite, Druze, Kurds, Circassians and Bosniaks. By the end of 1945, the army numbered about 5,000 and the gendarmerie some 3,500. In April 1946, the last French officers were forced to leave Syria due to sustained resistance offensives; the Levantine Forces then became the regular armed forces of the newly independent state and grew rapidly to about 12,000 by the time of the 1948 Arab−Israeli War, the first of four Arab−Israeli wars involving Syria between 1948 and 1986.
First and Second Republic (1946–1963)
The Syrian Armed Forces fought in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War and were involved in some military coups. Between 1948 and 1967, a series of coups destroyed the stability of the government and any remaining professionalism within the armed forces. In March 1949, the chief of staff, Gen. Husni al-Za'im, installed himself as president. Two more military dictators followed by December 1949. Gen. Adib Shishakli then held power until deposed in the 1954 Syrian coup d'état. Further coups followed, each attended by a purge of the officer corps to remove supporters of the losers from the force.The Syrian armed forces were part of the Armed Forces of the United Arab Republic between 1958 and 1961. Some Syrian ground forces formed the First Army while the Second and Third Armies were established by the Egyptian half of the unified state.
Ba'athist Syria (1963–2024)
In 1963, the Military Committee of the Syrian Regional Command of the Ba'ath Party spent most of its time planning to take power through a conventional military coup. From the very beginning, the Military Committee knew it had to capture al-Kiswah and Qatana, two military camps and seize control of the 70th Armored Brigade at al-Kiswah, the Military Academy in the city of Homs and the Damascus radio station. While the conspirators of the Military Committee were all young, their aim was not out of reach; the sitting regime had been slowly disintegrating and the traditional elite had lost effective political power over the country. A small group of military officers, including Hafez al-Assad, seized control in the March 1963 Syrian coup d'état. Following the coup, Gen. Amin al-Hafiz discharged many ranking Sunni officers, thereby, Stratfor says, "providing openings for hundreds of Alawites to fill top-tier military positions during the 1963–1965 period on the grounds of being opposed to Arab unity. This measure tipped the balance in favor of Alawite officers who staged a coup in 1966 and, for the first time, placed Damascus in the hands of the Alawites."The Armed Forces were involved in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since 1967, most of the Golan Heights territory of southwestern Syria has been under Israeli occupation. They then fought in the late 1960s War of Attrition and the 1970 Black September invasion of Jordan.
When Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1971, the army began to modernize and change. In the first 10 years of Assad's rule, the army increased by 162%, and by 264% by 2000. At one point, 70% of the country's annual budget spend only to the army. At the beginning of the 1973 Arab-Israel War, the Syrian Army launched an attack to seize the Golan Heights that was only narrowly repulsed by two vastly outnumbered Israeli brigades. Since 1973 the cease-fire line has been respected by both sides, with very few incidents until the Syrian civil war.
Syria was invited into Lebanon by that country's president in 1976, to intervene on the side of the Lebanese government against PLO guerilla and Lebanese Christian forces. The Arab Deterrent Force originally consisted of a Syrian core, up to 25,000 troops, with participation by some other Arab League states totaling only around 5,000 troops. In late 1978, after the Arab League had extended the mandate of the Arab Deterrent Force, the Sudanese, the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates announced intentions to withdraw troops from Lebanon, extending their stay into the early months of 1979 at the Lebanese government's request. The Libyan troops were abandoned, and the ADF thereby became a purely Syrian force.
A year after Israel invaded and occupied Southern Lebanon during the 1982 Lebanon War, the Lebanese government failed to extend the ADF's mandate, thereby effectively ending its existence, although not the Syrian or Israeli military presence in Lebanon. Eventually the Syrian presence became known as the Syrian occupation of Lebanon.