US troops are there under a 2001 authorization of military force that Congress passed in the days after the September 11 attacks to counter al-Qaeda. The Obama administration had determined that ISIS is a successor to al-Qaeda.
U.S. forces advise and assist the SDF, including in securing the detention facilities, and they also conduct counterterror missions against the Islamic State group and other al-Qaida-affiliated militants, and carry out strikes on Iran-backed militias that have attacked U.S. facilities.
Priority issues between the two states include the Arab–Israeli conflict, the Golan Heights annexation, Iraq War, state-sponsorship of terrorism, occupation of Lebanon, etc.
Unrest in Syria began on 15 March 2011 as part of the wider 2011 Arab Spring protests out of discontent with the Syrian government, eventually escalating to an armed conflict after protests calling for Assad's removal were violently suppressed. The war is currently being fought by several factions.
The Deir ez-Zor air raid was a series of 37 U.S.-led Coalition airstrikes near the Deir ez-Zor Airport in eastern Syria on 17 September 2016 that killed between 50 and 60 Syrian Army soldiers and wounded 30 more.
The Biden administration has doubled down on maintaining US troops in Syria. “The US has no intent to withdraw in the near future,” the senior Pentagon official told me. “We successfully pushed ISIS out of the territory it once held, but there are still ISIS members in Iraq and Syria, and we have more work to do.”
On 25 March 2023, the US military conducted a series of strikes in Syria, in response to a drone attack that killed a US contractor in northeastern Syria on 23 March 2023.
Upon the advice of Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov and Russian military elites, Vladimir Putin decided to launch a full-scale military intervention in Syria to prevent the fall of their ally Bashar al-Assad and stop Syria from joining the Western sphere of influence.
About 100 U.S. troops support the Syrian Free Army (formerly known as Jaysh Mughawir ath Thawra), an Arab force, at the At Tanf garrison. At Tanf is located along a transit route between Iraq and Syria used by both IS fighters and by Iran-backed militias.
Overview. As of 2023, active fighting in the conflict between the Syrian government and rebel groups had mostly subsided, but there were occasional flareups in Northwestern Syria.
Syria has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism since the list's inception in 1979 because of its continued support of terrorism and terrorist groups, its former occupation of Lebanon, its pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs and use of chemical weapons, and its ongoing efforts to ...
The Syrian government is politically and militarily supported by Iran and Russia, and actively supported by the Lebanese Hezbollah group, the Syrian-based Palestinian group PFLP-GC, and others.
Do not travel to Syria due to terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, armed conflict, and risk of unjust detention.
Al-Tanf (Arabic: التَّنْف, romanized: al-Tanf), also known as the Al-Tanf garrison (ATG), is a United States military base within territory controlled by the Syrian opposition in Homs Governorate, Syria. It is located 24 km (15 mi) west of the al-Tanf border crossing in the Syrian Desert.
The U.S. has at least 28 declared bases and other military sites in Syria as a sovereign state.
Algeria has donated US$30 million to Turkey and US$15 million to Syria. As of 10 February 2023, Algerian Civil Protection Teams in Syria and Turkey have rescued 13 people and pulled 84 bodies from rubble.
Estimation of casualties varies with some sources reported up to 200 Russian contractors died during the strikes. On 15 March 2023, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 266 Russian PMCs were killed in Syria during the civil war.
UNICEF is on the ground in Syria collaborating with partners to meet children's needs, providing health care, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education and protection services.
Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Syria were established in July 1944, and an agreement was signed in February 1946 ensuring Soviet support for Syrian independence ahead of the evacuation of French troops in April 1946. During World War II, both countries were on the Allied side against the Axis powers.
In 2017 the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has reported that Russia used cluster and incendiary weapons in Syria, constituting the war crime of indiscriminate attacks in a civilian populated area. OHCHR also found Russia guilty of war crimes in Ukraine in 2022 and 2023.
On 14 April 2018, beginning at 04:00 Syrian time (UTC+3), the United States, France, and the United Kingdom carried out a series of military strikes involving aircraft and ship-based missiles against multiple government sites in Syria during the Syrian Civil War.
“I want him to be U.S. contractor Scott Dubis, Scott Patrick Dubis, of Summerville, South Carolina, and I wanted people to know that he sacrificed his life for this country. And he did. He was over there working side by side with the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces and he was very proud of that.
Iran sees the survival of the Syrian government as being crucial to its regional interests. When the uprising developed into the Syrian Civil War, there were increasing reports of Iranian military support, and of Iranian training of the National Defence Forces both in Syria and Iran.