March 15 – April 2011 · Deraa Theater

The Syrian uprising began in Deraa after teenagers were arrested and tortured for scrawling anti-government graffiti on school walls. Security forces opened fire on protesters who gathered to demand their release, killing several demonstrators. The killings ignited outrage across Syria, and what started as a local protest over detained children rapidly became a nationwide call for political reform and Assad's removal. The government's brutal initial response foreclosed any possibility of a negotiated political solution and set the tone for the violence that would consume the country for years.

February 2011 – May 2014 · Homs Theater

Homs, Syria's third-largest city, became the symbolic 'capital of the revolution' as early protests transformed into fierce urban combat. The Baba Amr neighborhood — a rebel stronghold — was subjected to weeks of shelling that drew international condemnation and saw two Western journalists, Marie Colvin and Rémi Ochlik, killed in February 2012. After Baba Amr fell in March 2012, the battle shifted to Homs's medieval old city, where rebels held out under siege for nearly two years, with civilians reduced to eating grass and leaves. The final government takeover in May 2014 came after a negotiated evacuation of remaining fighters, leaving the old city in near-total ruins.

July 15–18, 2012 · Damascus Theater

Rebels launched 'Operation Damascus Volcano' on July 15, 2012, simultaneously attacking multiple districts of the capital in the most audacious offensive of the war's first year. A suicide bomb two days into the battle killed the Syrian defense minister, the deputy defense minister, and Assad's brother-in-law Assef Shawkat at a National Security headquarters meeting — the highest-level assassination of the conflict. Despite shocking the regime and briefly seizing several suburbs, rebel forces lacked the manpower to hold ground against armored counterattacks and were pushed back within days, demonstrating both the rebels' capability to threaten the capital and their inability to deliver a decisive blow.

July 19, 2012 – December 22, 2016 · Aleppo Theater

The battle for Aleppo — Syria's largest city and its economic capital — became the war's defining campaign, lasting four and a half years and splitting the city along a jagged front line between rebel-held eastern districts and government-controlled western ones. Both sides subjected the other to daily artillery, airstrikes, and sniper fire; the regime used barrel bombs dropped from helicopters on densely populated eastern neighborhoods; rebels fired unguided mortars into the west. Russian military intervention from September 2015 dramatically tilted the balance, with Russian and Syrian aircraft conducting relentless airstrikes on hospitals, markets, and water infrastructure in rebel-held areas in what critics described as deliberate targeting of civilian life. The final government offensive in November–December 2016, supported by Iranian-backed militias and Russian airpower, resulted in the mass evacuation of an estimated 35,000 rebels and civilians from east Aleppo — the war's most significant government victory.

August 21, 2013 · Ghouta, Damascus suburbs Theater

In the pre-dawn hours of August 21, 2013, rockets filled with sarin nerve agent struck two rebel-held suburbs of Damascus — Zamalka and Ein Tarma in Eastern Ghouta, and Moadamiyeh in Western Ghouta — killing between 1,300 and 1,700 civilians in their sleep, including hundreds of children. The attack was the largest use of chemical weapons since Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds of Halabja in 1988. President Obama had declared the use of chemical weapons a 'red line' that would trigger US military action; the Ghouta attack appeared to cross it definitively, and the US Navy positioned destroyers off the Syrian coast. But after the British Parliament voted against military action and facing Congressional opposition at home, Obama accepted a Russian-brokered deal under which Assad agreed to surrender his declared chemical weapons stockpile — a deal critics said rewarded Assad for the attack and shattered US credibility.

June 29, 2014 · Raqqa, Syria / Mosul, Iraq Theater

On June 29, 2014 — the first day of Ramadan — the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham announced it was abolishing its name and declaring a 'caliphate' over the territory it controlled in Syria and Iraq, renaming itself simply 'the Islamic State' and demanding the allegiance of Muslims worldwide. The announcement came days after ISIS fighters seized Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, in a lightning offensive that saw Iraqi security forces collapse and flee. ISIS now controlled a territory the size of Great Britain, with a population of 8 million, oil fields, banks, weapons depots, and a ruthless bureaucracy. The caliphate declaration drew tens of thousands of foreign fighters from over 100 countries and transformed the Syrian conflict from a regional proxy war into a global crisis, forcing the United States to form a 65-nation coalition.

September 16, 2014 – January 26, 2015 · Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) Theater

ISIS launched a massive assault on the Kurdish town of Kobani on the Turkish border in September 2014, deploying tanks and heavy weapons seized from the Iraqi Army and quickly surrounding the town on three sides. With the Turkish military watching passively from across the border — Ankara had little interest in saving Kurdish fighters — the battle became a globally televised test of whether ISIS could be stopped. US airstrikes, initially scattered, intensified dramatically as Kobani became symbolically critical; Kurdish reinforcements from Iraq were eventually permitted to cross Turkey. When YPG Kurdish fighters finally drove ISIS from Kobani on January 26, 2015, the battle had cost ISIS an estimated 1,000–2,000 fighters and established the YPG — later rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces — as the United States' most effective ground partner against ISIS.

September 30, 2015 · Latakia / nationwide Theater

On September 30, 2015, Russian aircraft operating from Hmeimim air base near Latakia began conducting airstrikes in Syria — the first Russian combat operations outside the former Soviet Union since the Afghan War. Putin framed the intervention as targeting ISIS, but the vast majority of early strikes hit other rebel groups in Idlib, Hama, and Homs provinces where ISIS had no presence, making clear that Russia's primary goal was to stabilize the Assad government rather than defeat jihadism. The intervention introduced Su-24, Su-25, and Su-34 aircraft, cruise missiles fired from Caspian Sea ships, and eventually Su-57 fighters. Russian involvement — combined with Iranian-backed militia reinforcements — reversed Assad's declining military fortunes almost immediately, enabling the Aleppo offensive and ultimately preserving the regime.

November – December 22, 2016 · East Aleppo Theater

After four years of stalemate, the Syrian government — supported by Russian airstrikes, Iranian-backed militias, and Hezbollah fighters — launched the final offensive to retake rebel-held East Aleppo in November 2016. The assault combined relentless aerial bombardment, including attacks on the last functioning hospitals, with a ground advance by Syrian army regulars and foreign militias. As the enclave shrank to a few square kilometers, the international community watched helplessly as the UN Security Council failed to pass ceasefire resolutions repeatedly vetoed by Russia. On December 13, a negotiated evacuation began, with green buses carrying an estimated 35,000 rebels and civilians to Idlib province over several weeks — the largest single displacement of the war's later phase. Assad's capture of Aleppo was the turning point that confirmed his survival and transformed the conflict from a potential regime-change war into a grinding, frozen conflict.

April 4, 2017 · Khan Shaykhun, Idlib Theater

A Syrian Air Force Su-22 dropped a sarin-filled bomb on the rebel-held town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib province on April 4, 2017, killing at least 83 people — including 30 children — and injuring hundreds more. Images of dying children foaming at the mouth spread worldwide, moving even President Trump, who had previously opposed intervention, to order a retaliatory US cruise missile strike on Shayrat air base — the first direct US military action against the Assad government. The strike, 59 Tomahawk missiles, destroyed aircraft hangars and killed several soldiers but had limited lasting impact; Syrian aircraft were operating from Shayrat again within days. The OPCW confirmed sarin use, and the attack demonstrated that Assad had retained undeclared chemical weapons despite the 2013 deal.

June 6 – October 17, 2017 · Raqqa Theater

US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), supported by American special operations troops, airstrikes, and artillery, launched the final assault on Raqqa — ISIS's de facto capital and self-proclaimed 'capital of the caliphate' — on June 6, 2017. The battle was characterized by intense urban combat as ISIS fighters used the civilian population as human shields and planted thousands of improvised explosive devices throughout the city. US-led coalition airstrikes and artillery, combined with SDF ground advances, reduced an estimated 80% of Raqqa's buildings to rubble in the four-month campaign. When Raqqa fell on October 17, the territorial caliphate was broken; ISIS scattered into the desert and reverted to insurgent tactics. The battle cost roughly 1,600 civilian lives and left 270,000 people displaced from a city that would require years to make habitable.

June 17, 2020 · Washington D.C. Theater

The Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, named for the Syrian military defector who smuggled out 53,275 photographs of tortured detainees from Assad's prisons, entered into force on June 17, 2020, imposing the most sweeping US sanctions yet on the Assad regime and anyone doing business with it. The act targeted not only Syrian government officials and entities but also foreign companies — including Russian and Iranian firms — that provided construction, engineering, or infrastructure services to Assad, effectively blocking any reconstruction funding. The sanctions represented a bipartisan US determination that Assad should face economic consequences for his atrocities even after his military victory; they also frustrated Gulf Arab states and European countries that had quietly explored normalization with Damascus. The Caesar Act has been called the 'economic death sentence' of the Assad government, ensuring Syria remained an economic pariah.