Key Actors
A conflict always has key actors, and on this page we will be looking at the key actors of the Syrian civil war.
First of all we have Bashar Al-Assad, who is the president of Syria, and the party leader of the Ba’ath government. Bashar Al-Assad’s ideology is Ba’athism, which is basically establishing a progessive Arabic state.
Secondly we have the Free Syrian Army, which is a rebel group that is anti Ba’ath. They fight the Ba’ath government and the Syrian Armed Forces. They basically fight the system, saying they will “bring this regime down”. The FSA and the Ba’ath government are the 2 main actors in this conflict.
Hezbollah is also involved in this conflict, as it is an ally of the Ba’ath government. It helps the Ba’ath government fight the Free Syrian Army, for example by guarding the borders. Hezbollah is not the only militant group involved in the Syrian civil war, also Al Nusra Front is involved in the conflict. However, Al Nusra is allied with the Free Syrian Army, so it is part of the opposition. Al Nusra Front is part of the opposition because it wants to remove the regime of Al-Assad, and replace it with a Sunni government, because the current government is Shia.
First of all we have Bashar Al-Assad, who is the president of Syria, and the party leader of the Ba’ath government. Bashar Al-Assad’s ideology is Ba’athism, which is basically establishing a progessive Arabic state.
Secondly we have the Free Syrian Army, which is a rebel group that is anti Ba’ath. They fight the Ba’ath government and the Syrian Armed Forces. They basically fight the system, saying they will “bring this regime down”. The FSA and the Ba’ath government are the 2 main actors in this conflict.
Hezbollah is also involved in this conflict, as it is an ally of the Ba’ath government. It helps the Ba’ath government fight the Free Syrian Army, for example by guarding the borders. Hezbollah is not the only militant group involved in the Syrian civil war, also Al Nusra Front is involved in the conflict. However, Al Nusra is allied with the Free Syrian Army, so it is part of the opposition. Al Nusra Front is part of the opposition because it wants to remove the regime of Al-Assad, and replace it with a Sunni government, because the current government is Shia.
Shabiha is a group which is less well-known than Hezbollah, but it is also an important group in the civil war. It is the Private Military Company (PMC) of Al-Assad which carries out attacks on the opposition.The Ba’ath government gets support from Iran, which includes technical support, combat troops, and 9 billion dollars financial support.
Saudi Arabia provides support, mostly by giving weapons, to the opposition. Before the civil war, Saudi Arabia and Syria had a good international relation, but King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia disliked the way Assad treated opponents of his regime demonstrating. Saudi Arabia was also supplying weapons to the opposition, this made the relation even worse. The role of the western countries (which are mainly France, Great Britain and the United States) is that they supply non-lethal military aid and they provide intelligence to the opposition. Islamic State’s role in the civil war is that they hold territory in Syria, and they are Sunni. So they also want to get rid of Assad’s regime. But Islamic State does not have any allies, as every country or group thinks they are too radical.
This friendship chart shows the relations between the different countries, groups and parties, as you can guess, green means a good relation, yellow is uncertain whether it’s a good or a bad relation, and red is a bad relation:
