Syria. Quwwat al-Musallaha al-Arabiya al-Suriyah

The Syrian Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة السورية, romanized: al-Quwwāt al-Musallaḥah as-Sūrīyah) are the military forces of Syria. Up until the fall of Bashar al-Assad's Baath Party regime in December 2024, the Syrian Arab Armed Forces were the state armed forces. They consisted of the Syrian Arab Army, 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. The Minister of Defense held the position of Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Army and 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 (1948, the Six-Day War in 1967, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, and 1982 Lebanon War) and one with Jordan ("Black September" in Jordan, 1970). 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. The military 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 Syrian Arab Armed Forces collapsed in 2024 with the fall of the Assad regime and flight of Bashar al-Assad. The new de-facto rulers of Syria, Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, are 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.