Structure
With its headquarters in Damascus, the Syrian military consists of air, ground, and navy forces. Active personnel were estimated as 295,000 in 2011, with an additional 314,000 reserves. Paramilitary forces were estimated at 108,000 in 2011.
The majority of the Syrian military are Sunni, but most of the military leadership are Alawites. Alawites make up 12 percent of the Syrian population but are estimated to make up 70 percent of the career soldiers in the Syrian Army. Of the 200,000 or so career soldiers in the Syrian Army, 140,000 are Alawites. A similar imbalance is seen in the officer corps where some 80 percent of the officers are Alawites. The military’s most elite divisions, the Republican Guard and the 4th Mechanized Division, which are commanded by Bashar's brother, are exclusively Alawite. Most of Syria’s 300,000 conscripts and air force pilots are, however, Sunni. Because of the Alawite composition of the Syrian armed forces, its interests are closely aligned with those of President Bashar al-Assad and the Assad family.
Read more about this topic: Syrian Armed Forces
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other “isms,” it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate.”
—Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978)
“The structure was designed by an old sea captain who believed that the world would end in a flood. He built a home in the traditional shape of the Ark, inverted, with the roof forming the hull of the proposed vessel. The builder expected that the deluge would cause the house to topple and then reverse itself, floating away on its roof until it should land on some new Ararat.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)