What You know About Syrian Civil War / Part III

It has been more than 6 years now..
465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting..
Million injured..
12 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes..
Syrians are refugees everywhere in the world..

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I hope that you read:
Syrian Civil War / Part I
Syrian Civil War / Part II

If you read it, then you know:
Syrian Civil War started with very small protests in January 2011..
Some background on Syria..
The armed groups have involved themselves in Syrian Civil War..

Here in Part III, I will share with you:

• Detailed information about the armed groups.
• The war in Syria explained in five minutes.

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Government-aligned forces

• The regime, the government, Assad:
  Assad is a follower of the Alawi branch of Shia Islam, but most Syrians are Sunni Muslim.

• Syrian Arab Army (SAA):
  The army of Assad's government.

• Hezbollah:
  Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and militia. Designated by Canada, EU, US, and the UK as a terrorist organization. Operates in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.

• Iran:
  Shia Islamist democratic republic. Headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and lead by President Hassan Rouhani.

• Russia:
  They are government aligned for sure, but are also working with the SDF in a lesser capacity and does not share the government's hostility towards them.

Syrian Rebels

• The Free Syrian Army (FSA):
  Backed in the past by US & its allies in the middle east. Originally a group of Syrian Army officer defectors, it quickly became a catch-all coalition for mostly democratic, mostly moderate Islamist groups.

• Ahrar al-Sham (AaS):
  A Salafi Jihadist rebel group. Adjacent in ideology to Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the region. Formerly a member of coalitions like the Syrian Islamic Front and the Islamic Front, but the group is powerful enough in numbers and equipment that it is now an entity all its own.

• Tahrir al-Sham (HTS):
  A Salafi Jihadist terrorist rebel group formed out of a merger between AQ affiliates Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly Jabhat al-Nusra aka Al-Nusra Front, and 3 or 4 other similar groups.

• Euphrates Shield/Turkey (ES):
  Turkey launched its military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in August 2016. ES is made up of many groups, mostly under the FSA moniker, and operates only in the small zone of Syria north of Aleppo which is occupied by Turkey.

Kurdish/Kurdish-Aligned rebels

• Democratic Union Party (PYD):
  Left-wing Kurdish party in Northern Syria. Subscribes to the ideology of Democratic Confederalism, a libertarian socialist political ideology created by Murray Bookchin.Democratic Confederalism, or "Communalism," holds important values of democratic socialism, gender equality, and sustainability.

• Peoples Protection Units (YPG):
  The military wing of the PYD. Mostly Kurdish, but also includes Arabs, Assyrians, and foreign volunteers. Primarily fights against ISIS, but has fought against rebels in the past.

• Women's Protection Units (YPJ):
  The PYD's women's militias.

• Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF):
  Formed by the YPG, the SDF is a broad multi-ethnic and multi-religious alliance of ethnic militias formed mostly within Rojavan territory. Their goal is to form a secular, democratic Syrian state along the lines of the Rojavan constitution, but is not currently hostile to the government of Syria. Fights ISIS mostly, but also various Jihadi rebel groups.

• Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK):
  Left-wing Kurdish party operating primarily in Turkey. Has been engaged in armed struggle against the Turkish government for Kurdish independence from Turkey since the 1980s. Formerly a Marxist-Leninist group, now follows the same Communalist ideology as the PYD.

ISIS

Islamic State: ISIS. Formerly Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and many other things over the years, they split from Al Qaeda in 2014 after invading Syria from Iraq. ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, then declared himself Caliph of a world Caliphate, which further alienated virtually all other groups, including other Salafi-Jihadi groups. ISIS is of course considered a terrorist group by almost all nations and the UN, though there have been many, many accusations of it receiving support from the likes of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Has no allies in Syria, is hostile towards virtually all other operating groups in the country.

The war in Syria explained in five minutes | Guardian Animations

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