In 2009, Syria had an estimated population of 22.5 million people, with a growth rate of 1.8%. The economy was largely based on exports of crude oil and textiles as well as services in the areas of agriculture and tourism. Foreign relations were mainly focused on trade agreements with the Arab League and other countries in the region. In terms of politics, Syria was a unitary republic with a president as head of state. In 2009, Bashar al-Assad was the president at that time and his party had a majority in both houses of Parliament. See internetsailors for Syria in the year of 2011.
Yearbook 2009
Syria. According to countryaah, Syria’s role in the region was strengthened. The former enemy of Saudi Arabia sought a closer look, as did Turkey. Lebanon’s new head of government Saad al-Hariri signaled a will for reconciliation. On several occasions, the United States sent diplomats to Syria in an attempt to bring the country closer to Israel. In May, while US President Barack Obama renewed his sanctions on Syria, a month later it was decided to station an ambassador to the country. The United States saw Syria’s relationship with Israel as a key to lasting peace in the region. The issue was the Golan Heights occupied by Israel, which Syria demanded back. See ABBREVIATIONFINDER for abbreviation SY which stands for the nation of Syria.
Syria and Iraq ended in collision course following a series of attacks in Baghdad on August 19 which the Iraqi government believed had been carried out by militant Bath parties based in the country. Iraq demanded that Syria release two people it claimed had planned the attack. Syria refused. Iraq called home its ambassador from Damascus and Syria responded with the same coin. Turkey and Iran tried to mediate.
Mahmoud Issa, a prominent political prisoner, was released in June. It was in May 2007 that he was sentenced to three years in prison for, among other things, spreading fake news and weakening the national feeling. About 6,000 political prisoners were estimated to remain in Syrian prisons. Many of them were said to be Islamists.
The maximum sentence of one year in prison for so-called honor killings was abolished in July and replaced with a minimum sentence of two years. Women’s organizations saw the change in law as a small step forward. According to reports, about 200 women a year in Syria were murdered by men who believed that they and their family had been violated by the women’s immoral behavior.
Over 1 million people were starving and 300,000 fled when northeastern Syria was hit by the worst drought in decades. Behind the drought was partly climate change and partly the dam construction by rivers on the Turkish side of the border.
After several years of delay, the Damascus Stock Exchange opened on March 10. At the time of opening, the listed companies were four banks, an advertising agency and a transport company.
Throughout the latter half of 2014, Israel helped al-Nusra front the displaced Syrian military from the border with Israel. This was partly through intelligence cooperation. Partly by Israeli air bombardments of the Syrian military’s positions. In mid-January 2015, an Israeli combat helicopter attacked a Hezbollah convoy near the border and killed 5 senior Hezbollah members and an Iranian general. The tactical goal was to strengthen al-Nusra and help displace Hezbollah from the border. The strategic goal was to provoke Hezbollah to respond again with an attack on Israeli positions. That would give Israel a pretext to start a new war against Lebanon that would both weaken Hezbollah and force the movement to withdraw its troops from Syria, thereby strengthening Syrian jihadists.
By the end of January 2015, YPG had displaced ISfrom Kobanê. However, over half of the city was uninhabitable as a result of the devastation following the many months of fierce fighting and IS ‘mining of the city’s houses and streets. The YPG continued its offensive to expel IS from the hundreds of villages around Kobane. In June, the YPG militia stood just 55 km from IS’s self-proclaimed capital, Raqqa. Turkey then decided to move IS to the rescue. That same month, the ruling Islamist AKP party suffered a severe defeat as it gained less than 50% of the vote in the parliamentary elections. No one else would support let alone join the Islamist government. The AKP therefore decided to print new elections. It considered that a key element in securing victory in the later elections was to crush the Kurds and especially the Kurdish HDP, which gained over 13% of the votes in the June elections. In July, Turkey therefore began open war against its own Kurdish population and against the Kurds in Syria. The YPG’s positions were bombed by the Turks on several occasions and at the same time groups of PKK partisans had to retreat to Turkey to defend the Kurdish population against the Turkish military. The consequence was that IS from July could again go on the offensive after being pressed for many months by the YPG. In July, IS was able to occupy the ancient city of Palmyra, which was the seat of some of the most beautiful temple ruins from ancient times in Syria. During the fall, the IS temple complex burst into the air. Part of the movement’s extensive destruction of past, present and future in Syria.
Turkey was not interested in the Kurdish refugees from Syria who came to the country on their escape from IS, and they therefore traveled quickly to Europe. This helped to generate the flow of almost 1 million. refugees who, through 2015, through Greece applied to the EU.
After the US began to bomb IS in 2014, the Islamist monopoly monarchies in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf had supplied more advanced weapons to the jihadists in Syria – including anti-tank rockets. It eliminated the advantage the Assad regime had until then had in the form of tanks and armored vehicles, and from the spring of 2015 the regime was therefore in the defensive. It initially received support from Hezbollah which helped clear jihadist controlled areas in the Syria-Lebanon border areas. After that, Iran also became more active in the fighting. At the end of September 2015, exactly 1 year after the United States began throwing bombs in the sand in Iraq and Syria, Russia also joined the belligerents as it began bombing jihadists from air bases in western Syria. While the Western “bombings” had no influence on the course of the war, the Russian quickly yielded results. After 2 months, IS was forced to halve the wages of its jihadists due to the Russian bombing of the IS controlled oil fields and the tankers driving the oil to Turkey. Conversely, Russian bombings triggered fierce protests from the West, Turkey and the clerical dictatorships in the Arabian Peninsula. Jihadist supporters threatened to step up arms supplies to Syria. In November, Turkey shot down a Russian bomber, claimed it had entered Turkish airspace and accused Russia of violating Turkey’s sovereignty. This despite frequent Turkish invasions of northern Iraq and bombings in Syria. Russia denied that the plane had flown over Turkey, and the reality was that it fell several kilometers inside Syria. The real background was that the Russians had bombed Turkmen rebels in northwestern Syria. They were supported by Turkey. Russia did not respond militarily to Turkey, but stopped the flow of tourism to the country, imposed financial sanctions and subsequently bombed the Turkmen.
Following IS terrorist actions in Sinai, Beirut and Paris in October/November, in December there was the unanimous adoption of a Syria resolution in the UN Security Council to pave the way for the implementation of a “peace process”. However, it was a process in which all parties acted in a frightened way, and where some of the central parties of the war – the Kurds (because Turkey would not have them), al-Nusra and IS (because the West would not have them) – were excluded from negotiations. Saudi Arabia sent a coalition of small indifferent Syrian rebel groups lest the Assad regime be the only Syrians at the Geneva peace talks. When the negotiations were stopped after a few days, Russia drastically stepped up its bombing of the jihadists, thus paving the way for a Syrian offensive, which included should “liberate” Aleppo. The bombings sent another 50,000 on the run, in addition to the $ 15 million. that were already internally or externally displaced. At the same time, both Turkey and Saudi Arabia threatened to step up their participation in the war by sending both bombers and soldiers into Syria. The aim was apparently to provoke military confrontation between Turkey and Russia, thereby actively involving NATO in the war on jihadists. At the beginning of February, Saudi Arabia sent F-16 aircraft to the Turkish Incirlik air base, and Turkey conducted daily artillery bombardments of YPG silos. Turkey would at all costs prevent the Kurds from gaining control of the last 60 km of the border between Turkey and Syria, so that Turkey could no longer send supplies and jihadists across the border.