Syrian Army

The Syrian Army, officially the Syrian Arab Army (Arabic: الجيش العربي السوري‎ al-Jaysh al-’Arabī as-Sūrah), is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. It is the dominant military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the senior most posts in the armed forces, and has the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the combined services. The Syrian Army was formed by the French after World War I, after the French obtained a mandate over the region.

Since 1948 it has played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting five military coups (two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, 1954, 1963, 1966, as well as the 1970 Syrian Corrective Revolution). It has fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six Day War in 1967, 1973, and 1982 in Lebanon) and one with Jordan (Black September in Jordan, 1970). An armoured division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamic uprising in Syria, and since early 2011 has been heavily engaged in fighting what initially was an uprising, but is now being referred to as the Syrian civil war.