Syrian revolution

The Syrian revolution was a series of mass protests and civilian uprisings throughout Syria – with a subsequent violent reaction by the Ba'athist regime – lasting from 2011 to 2024 as part of the greater Arab Spring in the Arab world. The revolution, which demanded the end of the decades-long Assad family rule, began as minor demonstrations during January 2011 and transformed into large nationwide protests in March. The uprising was marked by mass protests against the Ba'athist dictatorship of president Bashar al-Assad meeting police and military violence, massive arrests and a brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and tens of thousands wounded. 13 years after the start of the revolution, the Assad regime fell in 2024 after a series of rebel offensives.

Despite al-Assad's attempts to crush the protests with crackdowns, censorship and concessions, the mass protests had become a full-blown revolution by the end of April. The Ba'athist government deployed its ground troops and airforce, ordering them to fight the rebels. The regime's deployment of large-scale violence against protestors and civilians led to international condemnation of the Assad government and support for the protestors. Discontent among soldiers led to massive defections from the Syrian Arab Army, while people began to form opposition militias across the country, gradually transforming the revolution from a civil uprising to an armed rebellion, and later a full-scale civil war. The Free Syrian Army was formed on 29 July 2011, marking the beginning of an armed insurgency.

As the Syrian insurgency progressed in October–December 2011, protests against the government simultaneously strengthened across northern, southern and western Syria. The uprisings were crushed by massive crackdowns, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of casualties, which angered many across the country. The regime also deployed sectarian Shabiha death squads to attack the protestors. Protests and revolutionary activities by students and the youth continued despite aggressive suppression. As opposition militias began capturing vast swathes of territory throughout 2012, the United Nations officially declared the clashes in Syria as a civil war in June 2012.

The unprecedented violence led to global backlash, with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) convening an emergency session on 29 April and tasking a fact-finding mission to investigate the scale of atrocities in Syria. The investigation by the commission concluded that the Syrian Arab Army, secret police and Ba'athist paramilitaries engaged in massacres, forced disappearances, summary executions, show-trials, torture, assassinations, and persecution and abductions of suspects from hospitals, amongst others, with an official "shoot-to-kill" policy from the government. The UNHRC report published on 18 August stated that the atrocities amounted to crimes against humanity, with High Commissioner Navi Pillai urging Security Council members to prosecute al-Assad in the International Criminal Court. A second emergency session convened by the UNHRC on 22 August condemned the Assad government's atrocities and called for an immediate cessation of all military operations and engagement in Syrian-led political process, with numerous countries demanding al-Assad's resignation. The Syrian revolution achieved its main goal of achieving the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 after Assad fled to Moscow. The fall of Damascus ended the Assad regime as the Syrian prime minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali handed over power to the revolutionaries and they formed the Syrian transitional government.

At the onset of the Arab Spring, Ba'athist Syria was considered as the most restrictive police state in the Arab World; with a tight system of regulations on the movement of civilians, independent journalists and other unauthorized individuals. Reporters Without Borders listed Syria as the 6th worst country in its 2010 Press Freedom Index. Before the uprising in Syria began in mid-March 2011, protests were relatively modest, considering the wave of unrest that was spreading across the Arab world. Until March 2011, for decades Syria had remained superficially tranquil, largely due to fear among the people of the secret police arresting critical citizens. A previous large scale uprising in the country against the rule of Ba'athist President Hafez Al-Assad was brutally crushed, culminating in the 1982 Hama massacre, during which over 40,000 civilians were killed.

Following the death of Hafez Al-Assad in 2000, his son Bashar Al-Assad inherited the presidency. This coincided with a brief period of liberalization and debate regarding the country's future, in the form of the Damascus Spring, but hopes of Bashar pursuing a reformist agenda were dashed when his forces arrested many of the leaders of this movement, putting an end to it by late 2001. After winning the 2007 presidential election in Syria with 99.82% of the declared votes, Bashar al-Assad implemented numerous measures that further intensified political and cultural repression in Syria. The Assad government expanded travel bans against numerous dissidents, intellectuals, authors and artists living in Syria; preventing them and their families from travelling abroad. In September 2010, The Economist newspaper described the Syrian government as "the worst offender among Arab states", which engaged in imposing travel bans and restricted free movement of people. Over 400 individuals in Syria were reportedly restricted by Assad regime's travel bans in 2010. During this period, the Assad government arrested numerous journalists and shut down independent press centres, in addition to tightening its censorship of the internet.

Factors contributing to social disenchantment in Syria include socio-economic stress caused by the Iraqi conflict, as well as the most intense drought ever recorded in the region. For decades, the Syrian economy, army and government had been dominated by patronage networks of Ba'ath party elites and Alawite clients loyal to the Assad family. The Assad dynasty held a firm grip over most sectors of the Syrian economy and corruption was endemic in the public and private sectors. The pervasive nature of corruption had been a source of controversy within the Ba'ath party circles as well as the wider public; as early as the 1980s. The persistence of corruption, sectarian bias, nepotism and widespread bribery that existed in party, bureaucracy and military led to popular anger that resulted in the large-scale protests of the revolution.

Minor protests calling for government reforms began in January, and continued into March. At this time, massive protests were occurring in Cairo against Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, and in Syria on 3 February via the websites Facebook and Twitter, a "Day of Rage" was called for by activists against the government of Bashar al-Assad, to be held on Friday, 4 February. This did not result in protests.