The Syrian Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة العربية السورية) are the military forces of Syria. They consist of the Syrian Arab Army, Syrian Arab Navy, Syrian Arab Air Force, Syrian Arab Air Defense Force, and several paramilitary forces. According to the Syrian Constitution, the President of Syria is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
The military is a conscripted force; males serve in the military upon reaching the age of 18. Before the beginning of the Syrian uprising/civil war, the obligatory military service period was being decreased over time. In 2005, it was reduced from two and a half years to two years, in 2008 to 21 months and in 2011 to year and a half.
Famous quotes containing the words syrian, armed and/or forces:
“If in that Syrian garden, ages slain,
You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,
Nor even in dreams behold how dark and bright
Ascends in smoke and fire by day and night
The hate you died to quench and could but fan,
Sleep well and see no morning, son of man.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)