Syrian civil war

The Syrian civil war,^[53] also commonly known as the Syrian uprising,^[54] is an ongoing armed conflict in Syria between forces loyal to the Syrian Ba'ath Party government and those seeking to oust it. The conflict began on 15 March 2011 with nationwide demonstrations, as part of the wider protest movement known as the Arab Spring. Protesters demanded the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad, the present personification of his family's decades-long rule, as well as the end to nearly five decades of Ba'ath Party rule.
In April 2011, the Syrian Army was deployed to quell the uprising, and soldiers were ordered to open fire on demonstrators. After months of military sieges,^[55] the protests evolved into an armed rebellion. Opposition forces, mainly composed of defected soldiers and civilian volunteers, became increasingly armed and organized as they unified into larger groups. However, the rebels remained fractured, without organized leadership. The Syrian government characterizes the insurgency as an uprising of "armed terrorist groups and foreign mercenaries".^[56] The conflict has no clear fronts, with clashes taking place in many towns and cities across the country.^[57]
The Arab League, United States, European Union, Arab Gulf States, and other countries condemned the use of violence against the protesters. The Arab League suspended Syria's membership because of the government's response to the crisis, but it sent an observer mission in December 2011, as part of its proposal for peaceful resolution of the crisis. A further attempt to resolve the crisis was made through the appointment of Kofi Annan as a special envoy. On 15 July 2012, the International Committee of the Red Cross assessed the Syrian conflict as a "non-international armed conflict" (the ICRC's legal term for civil war), thus applying international humanitarian law under the Geneva Conventions to Syria.
On 2 January 2013, the United Nations stated that the war's death toll had exceeded 60,000.^[46] According to various opposition activist groups, between 50,000 and 63,735 people have been killed,^[29][58] of which about half were civilians, but also including 26,110–27,900 armed combatants consisting of both the Syrian Army and rebel forces,^[29][59] up to 2,505 opposition protesters^[43][44] and 1,000 government officials.^[32] By October 2012, up to 28,000 people had been reported missing, including civilians forcibly abducted by government troops or security forces.^[60] According to the UN, about 1.2 million Syrians have been displaced within the country.^[49] To escape the violence, hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries. In addition, tens of thousands of protesters have been imprisoned and there were reports of widespread torture and psychological terror in state prisons.^[61][62] International organizations accused the government and Shabiha of severe human rights violations.^[63] Anti-government armed rebels were accused of human rights abuses as well.^[64] Human rights groups report that the majority of abuses have, however, been committed by the Syrian government's forces and UN investigations have concluded that the government's abuses are the greatest in both gravity and scale.^[65][66][67]