Syria

8

The Kurds.

Asma Assad is Syria's First Lady. She is the wife of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Miditerranean

The actual conflict in Syria can lead to a regional war by spreading throughout its border to Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon, and if Iran gets attacked, then there could be a World War 3.

Syria is in a Civil War! It's only peaceful for the dead who were killed by military action.

Bashar al-Assad is the current ruler of Syria, a job he inherited from his father Hafez al-Assad. The opponents of the al-Assad family would say these two men have ruled Syria in a very dictatorial way, while their supporters would say their rule has kept Syria a stable and prosperous country.

Palestinians, Circassians, Chechens, Armenians, Assyrians, Syrians, and Aramaeans live in Suria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Yes, the Romans ultimately won the war in Syria, which was marked by a series of conflicts including the Roman-Syrian Wars during the 1st century BCE. Key victories, such as the defeat of King Antiochus III at the Battle of Magnesia in 190 BCE and the subsequent establishment of Roman influence over the region, solidified their control. By the end of the 1st century BCE, Syria was incorporated into the Roman Empire as a province, further demonstrating their military and political success in the area.

Probably by trade or barter.

Arabs.

Shabiha ,or Shabeeha means thugs ,or bullies .

They are hired by the syrian regime to assault protesters who protest against the Syrian regime .

Most of them were prisoners and some of them are from the security\military forces .

Syria is involved in a civil war now, 2014

Syrian Lyra

137 according to Jane's

yes Syria is called as shaam

Ordinary and official passport holders are exempted from visa for their travel up to 90 days within 6 months starting from the first entry date.

It is called the Syrian Arab republic, the thugs in Syria appointed Bashar AL-assad to succeed his father Hafes AL-assad they manipulated the constitution for this

Shes 10. She was born on October 10 2000.

Boogala

Note: Don't listen to those Assad supporters, because they're out there to brainwash others to support this bloodthristy dictator. Be objective and find the truth. Its cause is a long and pitiful tragedy.

Syria was created as a byproduct of Ottoman Turkish and French occupation. When the French kicked the Turks out of Syria after WWI, the French started to intergrate several religious and ethnic communities (Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Druzes, Kurds) under their control, creating a nation called "Syria". The French does not trust the Sunni Muslim majority and hence they installed their colonial army officers with Alawite, Druze, and Christian troops. This is where Bashar al-Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad started his military career.

When the French finally gave Syria independence in 1946, it was established as a Western-style parliamentary republic, with a powerful parliament, prime minister, and a figurehead president. However the government itself is elected by majority Sunni Muslims. Those who are not Sunnis resented this new parliamentary republic system. Syria's minorities started to support the rising new Arab Socialist Baath Party, where the Baath Party preached religious and ethnic equality (however, when they come to power in 1963, they act as hypocrites and started sidelining Sunni Muslims).

The parliamentary republic reached a dead end when Syria signed with Nasser's Egypt to become united into one country under the United Arab Republic. However, Syria's religious minorities feared that they'll be marginalized under Nasser, so they end up launching a military coup under the political arm of the Baath Party and seized power in 1963. The Baath Party becomes the sole legal political party in Syria--hence ending the parliamentary democratic system and starting the dictatorship era of Syria.

The Baath Party, despite united under a common goal of uniting all of Syria's religious communities, was ideologically divided in Cold-War style politics. The Baath Party back then was under Salah Jadid, who represent the pro-Soviet faction of the Baath Party. Salah Jadid's opposition was the Baath Party's pragmatist faction, led by defense minister Hafez al-Assad. The two sides started to break out openly when Salah Jadid assisted the Black September guerrillas of the Yasser Arafat's PLO to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy of King Hussein so that Arafat can seize control of Jordan and become part of Greater Palestine. Hafez al-Assad himself did not want to overthrow the Jordanian monarchy, as he only wants to protect Palestinians from the Jordanian army only. Conflicts arose between the two sides, leading for the Jordanian army to kick the PLO and all the Palestinians out to Lebanon. That conflict itself led to the Hafez al-Assad's coup d'etat in 1970 and ousted Salah Jadid and his supporters from the government and declare himself Syria's president.

Under Assad's rule, he continues to commit to the Baath Party's ideological commitment towards secularism and religious equality, as he begins building Syria's military and security structures to withstand internal and domestic threats to the Baath's power in the fear of a Sunni Islamist takeover---with the support of his own Alawite base, as well as on Christians and Druzes. When these threats started to occur with the Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, he mercilessly suppressed the uprising using bombs, airplanes and tanks, killing and slaughtering every civilian that existed in Hama in 1982 as a punishment for creating the Islamist uprising. The world ignored that event as though it didn't happened.

Assad also started a pervasive cult of personality as a Arab Nationalist warrior-type figure, showing himself fighting against Israel in the Six-Day War and all the subsequent wars. His anti-Israeli credentials did brought him a big support for his regime.

Hafez al-Assad remains president until his death in 2000. When his death came, the rubber-stamp Syrian parliament amended the Syrian constitution on the presidential age-limit to allow his son, Bashar, to become president.

Under Bashar's rule, he continued many of his father's policies, however, Bashar started to privatize sectors of the Syrian economy, allowing limited private investment and free markets into the country. However, Bashar created crony capitalism by placing his relatives or his supporters to run as CEO's. He ignored and neglected the management of everyday economic problems such as unemployment, inflation, poverty, etc...and marginalized the countryside as well.

When the Arab Spring came, protests started to spread across Syria and this is what created the Syrian Uprising. Bashar is no different from his father in using the same military tactics to suppress protests and the opposition in merciless, bloody way. Like Father, Like Son.

Despite the brutality and threat of genocide in that country, Bashar still has a relatively strong support from Syria's minority population, as the uprising started to get sectarianized with the opposition becoming more and more Sunni-dominated. That's what makes him different from Ben Ali, Mubarak, Gaddafi, and Ali Saleh. While those four dictators have no cover from the international community, Bashar still has a political cover from his allies, Iran, Russia, and China to portray Bashar as a good-guy facing the "so-called Sunni extremists".

The economic and political liberalization promised by Bashir Assad in 2000 has not emerged,leaving the economy somewhat stagnated and there have been no major developments in terms of domestic affairs;it remains a authoritarian regime although Assad does not have his father's reputation for brutality; he is a velvet glove dictator. Relations with the U.S. were recently strained by an incident involving a U.S. violation of Syrian territory in the course of an anti-terrorist mission. Syria does not maintain relations with Israel due to the latter government's continuing occupation of the Golan Heights,held for 41 years now as booty from the 1967 war. Relations with Lebanon have improved since the withdrawal of Syrian troops a decade ago.

Currently Syria is highly regarded for it's increasing role in the arts but is very isolated diplomatically; the standard of living is modern and literacy is high but per capita income is still sub-standard for what is a fairly Europeanized secular culture. On the plus side it is highly tolerant on cultural matters; it is 15-20% Christian and there is no persecution. Alcohol is permitted in restaurants. Damascus is a lovely modern city; any Westerner would feel more comfortable there than perhaps anywhere else in the Middle East. It is regarded as a terrorist-supporting nation for it's support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian Territories but neither organization is legally a terrorist group under international law; the U.S. unilaterally so designated them and several EU countries have followed suit. Given Israel's intractabiltiy over the return of the Golan it is understandable they would support it's enemies,if only as a bargaining chip.

France

2011