Early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war
Early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war | |
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Part of the neighbouring countries | |
Result |
|
- Syrian Armed Forces
- Security agencies
- Syrian Police Forces
- Ba'ath Brigades and other Ba'ath Party militias
- Shabiha
Iran
Russia[1]
- Free Syrian Army[2]
- Syrian Liberation Army[3]
- Syrian Revolution General Commission
- Syrian Revolutionary Front[4]
- Free Officers Movement (merged into the FSA in September 2011)
Fatah al-Islam[5]
Foreign mujahideen[6]
NATO[1]
Saudi Arabia[7]
Qatar[7]
Turkey[7]
Bashar al-Assad
President of Syria
Adel Safar
Prime Minister of Syria
Dawoud Rajiha
Defense Minister
Chief Of Staff (Syrian Army)
Maher al-Assad
4th Division Commander
Interior Minister
Assef Shawkat
Deputy Defense Minister and Intelligence head
Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Minister
Riad al-Asaad
Free Syrian Army commander
Higher Military Council head
Free Officers Movement commander, until August 2011
Security agencies and affiliated paramilitaries: ~200,000[9]
Ba'ath Party militias: tens of thousands[10]
Shabiha: 5,000–10,000[10]
Rebel claim
3,770 (opposition sources)[citation needed]–3,857 (Ba'athist sources: 15 March 2011–21 June 2012)[12] soldiers and policemen killed
2,980[13]–3,235[14] fighters killed
Civilian casualties (including 1,800–2,154 civilians killed during civil uprising):
The early insurgency phase of the
This period of the war saw the initial civil uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.[16]
The Arab League monitoring mission, initiated in December 2011, ended in failure by February 2012, as Syrian Ba'athist troops and oppositional militants continued to do battle across the country and the Syrian Ba'athist government prevented foreign observers from touring active battlefields, including besieged oppositional strongholds.
In early 2012, Kofi Annan acted as the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria. His peace plan provided for a ceasefire, but even as the negotiations for it were being conducted, the rebels and the Syrian army continued fighting even after the peace plan.[17]: 11 The United Nations-backed ceasefire was brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan and declared in mid-April 2012.
Background
The
The uprising was marked by massive anti-government opposition demonstrations against the Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad, meeting with police and military violence, massive arrests and brutal crackdown, resulting in hundreds of casualties and thousands of wounded.
Despite Bashar al-Assad's attempts to pacify the protests with massive crackdown and use of censorship on one hand and concessions on the other, by the end of April, it became clear the situation was getting out of his control and the Syrian government deployed numerous troops on the ground.
The civil uprising phase created the platform for emergence of militant opposition movements and massive defections from the Syrian Army, which gradually transformed the conflict from a civil uprising to an armed rebellion, and later a full-scale civil war. The rebel Free Syrian Army was created on 29 July 2011, marking the transition into armed insurgency.
Insurgency timeline
During the
Formation of FSA (July–November 2011)
On 29 July 2011, seven defecting Syrian Armed Forces officers formed the Free Syrian Army (FSA), originally composed of defected Syrian military officers and soldiers, aiming "to bring this government (the Assad government) down" with united opposition forces.[22][23] On 31 July, a nationwide crackdown nicknamed the "Ramadan Massacre" resulted in the death of at least 142 people and hundreds of injuries.[24] On 23 August, a coalition of anti-government groups called the Syrian National Council was formed. The council, based in Turkey, attempted to organize the opposition. The opposition, however, including the FSA, remained a fractious collection of political groups, longtime exiles, grassroots organizers and armed militants divided along ideological, ethnic and/or sectarian lines.[25]
Throughout August 2011, government forces stormed major urban centres and outlying regions, and continued to attack protests. On 14 August, the
By September 2011, Syrian rebels were engaged in an active insurgency campaign in many parts of Syria. A major confrontation between the FSA and the Syrian Armed Forces occurred in
By October 2011, the FSA started to receive active support from the Turkish government, which allowed the rebel army to operate its
In October 2011, clashes between government and army units which had defected were being regularly reported. During the first week of the month, sustained
According to defectors, in 2011 the Syrian government intentionally released imprisoned
Escalation (November 2011 – April 2012)
In early November 2011, clashes between the FSA and security forces in Homs escalated as the siege continued. After six days of bombardment, the Syrian Army stormed the city on 8 November, leading to heavy street fighting in several neighborhoods. Resistance in Homs was significantly greater than that seen in other towns and cities, and some in opposition have referred to the city as the "Capital of the Revolution". Unlike events in Deraa and Hama, operations in Homs failed to quell the unrest.[33]
November and December 2011 saw increasing rebel attacks, as opposition forces grew in number. In the two months, the FSA launched deadly attacks on an
In January 2012, Assad began using large-scale artillery operations against the insurgency, which led to the destruction of many civilian homes due to indiscriminate shelling.
On 3 February, the Syrian Army launched a major offensive in Homs to retake rebel-held neighborhoods. In early March, after weeks of artillery bombardments and heavy street fighting, the Syrian Army eventually captured the district of Baba Amr, a rebel stronghold. By the end of March, the Syrian Army retook control of half a dozen districts, leaving them in control of 70 percent of the city.[54] By 14 March, Syrian troops successfully ousted insurgents from the city of Idlib after days of fighting.[55] By early April, the estimated death toll of the conflict, according to activists, reached 10,000.[56] In April 2012, Assad forces began employing attack helicopters against rebel forces.[47]
In early 2012, Kofi Annan acted as the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria. His peace plan provided for a ceasefire, but even as the negotiations for it were being conducted, the rebels and the Syrian army continued fighting even after the peace plan.[17]: 11
Aftermath
The United Nations-backed ceasefire was brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan and declared in mid-April 2012, but eventually met a similar fate, with unarmed UN peacekeepers' movements tightly controlled by the government and fighting. By early June 2012, the civil war entered its most violent phase, with fighting spreading all across the country and fatalities mounting in unprecedented numbers. Incommunicado detention, including of children, also continued.[57]
See also
Notes
- ^ Though the Syrian Army officially comprised around 220,000 soldiers at the start of the insurgency, including active and reserve personnel, more than half of these troops either defected to the insurgents or refused to answer calls of mobilization. As result, the army was limited to about 60,000 men in 2011.[8]
References
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- ^ The VDC website has reported 1,093 former military rebels being killed,[2] Archived 11 April 2013 at the Wayback Machine of which 113 were killed in Homs province [3] Archived 21 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine in the period an FSA commander stated that 2,000 former military and civilian rebels overall were killed in Homs province alone;"QUSAYR, Syria - Syria's Farouq rebels battle to hold onto Qusayr, last outpost near Lebanese border - World - MyrtleBeachOnline.com". Archived from the original on 5 December 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2014. based on this a lower estimate of rebel fatalities can be calculated to be 2,980
- ^ The Syrianshuhada website has reported 1,398 former military rebels being killed, of which 163 were killed in Homs province [4] Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine in the period an FSA commander stated that 2,000 former military and civilian rebels overall were killed in Homs province alone;"QUSAYR, Syria - Syria's Farouq rebels battle to hold onto Qusayr, last outpost near Lebanese border - World - MyrtleBeachOnline.com". Archived from the original on 5 December 2012. Retrieved 25 October 2014. based on this an upper estimate of rebel fatalities can be calculated to be 3,235
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Works cited
- Cooper, Tom (2015). Syrian Conflagration. The Civil War 2011–2013. ISBN 978-1-910294-10-9.
- Bolling, Jeffrey (29 August 2012). "Rebel Groups in Northern Aleppo Province" (PDF). Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study of War.