II. External intervention in the Syrian civil war, 2015

Chapter:

4. External support in civil wars and other armed conflicts

Source:

SIPRI Yearbook 2016

Author(s):

Ian Davis

The Syrian Government’s brutal response to the domestic protest movement which began in 2011 pushed the country’s opposition towards militarization and sparked an all-consuming armed confrontation. Since 2012, the country has been ravaged by a civil war that has also served as a proxy battlefield for competing external powers. The year 2015 marked a dramatic escalation in third-party intervention in Syria’s war, as the country witnessed a series of increasingly assertive interventions and counter-interventions by external powers on behalf of their Syrian state and non-state allies and proxies (see figure 4.4). This section examines the significant developments and dynamics of two dimensions of external intervention in the Syrian civil war in 2015: the armed conflict itself and the negotiations to end the conflict.