Syria

An ancient centre of trade and empire reduced to a mandate and then to ruins. Damascus and Aleppo are among the longest continuously inhabited cities on earth, Ugarit produced one of the earliest alphabets, and the Umayyad caliphate ruled from Damascus an empire reaching from Spain to India. France took the territory under mandate in 1920 after defeating the short-lived Arab kingdom that had expected independence, and governed it by dividing it into statelets along sectarian lines - a practice that elevated minorities including the Alawites in the army, with consequences that lasted. Independence came in 1946. Union with Egypt from 1958 lasted three years, and a series of coups ended with the Baath in power and Hafez al-Assad taking control in 1970. The Golan Heights were lost to Israel in 1967. Hama was shelled in 1982 to crush an Islamist rising, killing thousands. Peaceful protests in 2011 were met with force and became a war that killed hundreds of thousands, displaced over half the population, drew in Russia, Iran, Turkey and the United States, and saw chemical weapons used. Assad's government fell in December 2024. Palmyra and the Krak des Chevaliers are World Heritage sites. The country has about twenty-three million people, with several million still displaced abroad. Arabic is official, with Kurdish, Armenian and Aramaic still spoken in places. Damascus claims to be the oldest continuously inhabited capital in the world. All six of its World Heritage sites were placed on the endangered list during the war. Aleppo's covered souk was among the largest anywhere before it burned.

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