title: Joan of Arc

text: Charles VII met Joan for the first time at the Royal Court in Chinon in late February or early March 1429, when she was seventeen and he was twenty-six. She told him that she had come to raise the siege of Orléans and to lead him to Reims for his coronation. They had a private exchange that made a strong impression on Charles; Jean Pasquerel, Joan's confessor, later testified that Joan told him she had reassured the Dauphin that he was Charles VI's son and legitimate king.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Charles and his council needed more assurance, and sent Joan to Poitiers to be examined by a council of theologians, who declared that she was a good person and a good Catholic. They did not render a decision on the source of Joan's inspiration, but agreed that sending her to Orléans could be useful to the king and would test if her inspiration was of divine origin. Joan was then sent to Tours to be physically examined by women directed by Charles's mother-in-law Yolande of Aragon, who verified her virginity. This was to establish if she could indeed be the prophesied virgin savior of France, to show the purity of her devotion, and to ensure she had not consorted with the Devil.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The dauphin, reassured by the results of these tests, commissioned plate armor for her. She designed her own banner, and had a sword brought to her from under the altar in the church at Sainte-Catherine-de-Fierbois. Around this time she began calling herself "Joan the Maiden", emphasizing her virginity as a sign of her mission.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Before Joan's arrival at Chinon, the Armagnac strategic situation was bad but not hopeless. The Armagnac forces were prepared to endure a prolonged siege at Orléans, the Burgundians had recently withdrawn from the siege due to disagreements about territory, and the English were debating whether to continue. Nonetheless, after almost a century of war, the Armagnacs were demoralized. Once Joan joined the Dauphin's cause, her personality began to raise their spirits inspiring devotion and the hope of divine assistance. Her belief in the divine origin of her mission turned the longstanding Anglo-French conflict over inheritance into a religious war. Before beginning the journey to Orléans, Joan dictated a letter to the Duke of Bedford warning him that she was sent by God to drive him out of France.


title: Joan of Arc

text: In the last week of April 1429, Joan set out from Blois as part of an army carrying supplies for the relief of Orléans. She arrived there on 29 April and met the commander Jean de Dunois, the Bastard of Orléans. Orléans was not completely cut off, and Dunois got her into the city, where she was greeted enthusiastically. Joan was initially treated as a figurehead to raise morale, flying her banner on the battlefield. She was not given any formal command or included in military councils, but quickly gained the support of the Armagnac troops. She always seemed to be present where the fighting was most intense, she frequently stayed with the front ranks, and she gave them a sense she was fighting for their salvation. Armagnac commanders would sometimes accept the advice she gave them, such as deciding what position to attack, when to continue an assault, and how to place artillery.


title: Joan of Arc

text: On 4 May, the Armagnacs went on the offensive, attacking the outlying (fortress of Saint Loup). Once Joan learned of the attack, she rode out with her banner to the site of the battle, a mile east of Orléans. She arrived as the Armagnac soldiers were retreating after a failed assault. Her appearance rallied the soldiers, who attacked again and took the fortress. On 5 May, no combat occurred since it was Ascension Thursday, a feast day. She dictated another letter to the English warning them to leave France, and had it tied to a bolt which was fired by a crossbowman.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The Armagnacs resumed their offensive on 6 May, capturing Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, which the English had deserted. The Armagnac commanders wanted to stop, but Joan encouraged them to launch an assault on "les Augustins", an English fortress built around a monastery. After its capture, the Armagnac commanders wanted to consolidate their gains, but Joan again argued for continuing the offensive. On the morning of 7 May, the Armagnacs attacked the main English stronghold, "les Tourelles". Joan was wounded by an arrow between the neck and shoulder while holding her banner in the trench on the south bank of the river, but later returned to encourage the final assault that took the fortress. The English retreated from Orléans on 8 May, ending the siege.


title: Joan of Arc

text: At Chinon, Joan had declared that she was sent by God. At Poitiers, when she was asked to show a sign demonstrating this claim, she replied that it would be given if she were brought to Orléans. The lifting of the siege was interpreted by many people to be that sign. Prominent clergy such as , Archbishop of Embrun, and the theologian Jean Gerson wrote treatises in support of Joan after this victory. In contrast, the English saw the ability of this peasant girl to defeat their armies as proof she was possessed by the Devil.


title: Joan of Arc

text: After the success at Orléans, Joan insisted that the Armagnac forces should advance promptly toward Reims to crown the Dauphin. Charles allowed her to accompany the army under the command of John II, Duke of Alençon, who collaboratively worked with Joan and regularly heeded her advice. Before advancing toward Reims, the Armagnacs needed to recapture the bridge towns along the Loire: Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency. This would clear the way for Charles and his entourage, who would have to cross the Loire near Orléans to get from Chinon to Reims.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The campaign to clear the Loire towns began on 11 June when the Armagnac forces led by Alençon and Joan arrived at Jargeau and forced the English to withdraw inside the town's walls. Joan sent a message to the English to surrender; they refused and she advocated for a direct assault on the walls the next day. By the end of the day, the town was taken. The Armagnac took few prisoners and many of the English who surrendered were killed. During this campaign, Joan continued to serve in the thick of battle. She began scaling a siege ladder with her banner in hand but before she could climb the wall, she was struck by a stone which split her helmet.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Alençon and Joan's army advanced on Meung-sur-Loire. On 15 June, they took control of the town's bridge, and the English garrison withdrew to a castle on the Loire's north bank. Most of the army continued on the south bank of the Loire to besiege the castle at Beaugency.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Meanwhile, the English army from Paris under the command of Sir John Fastolf had linked up with the garrison in Meung and traveled along the north bank of the Loire to relieve Beaugency. Unaware of this, the English garrison at Beaugency surrendered on 18 June. The main English army retreated toward Paris; Joan urged the Armagnacs to pursue them, and the two armies clashed at the Battle of Patay later that day. The English had prepared their forces to ambush an Armagnac attack with hidden archers, but the Armagnac vanguard detected and scattered them. A rout ensued that decimated the English army. Fastolf escaped with a small band of soldiers, but many of the English leaders were captured. Joan arrived at the battlefield too late to participate in the decisive action, but her encouragement to pursue the English had made the victory possible.


title: Joan of Arc

text: After the destruction of the English army at Patay, some Armagnac leaders argued for an invasion of English-held Normandy, but Joan remained insistent that Charles must be crowned. The Dauphin agreed, and the army left Gien on 29 June to march on Reims. The advance was nearly unopposed. The Burgundian-held town of Auxerre surrendered on 3 July after three days of negotiations, and other towns in the army's path returned to Armagnac allegiance without resistance. Troyes, which had a small garrison of English and Burgundian troops, was the only one to resist. After four days of negotiation, Joan ordered the soldiers to fill the city's moat with wood and directed the placement of artillery. Fearing an assault, Troyes negotiated a surrender.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Reims opened its gates on 16 July 1429. Charles, Joan, and the army entered in the evening, and Charles's consecration took place the following morning. Joan was given a place of honor at the ceremony, and announced that God's will had been fulfilled.


title: Joan of Arc

text: After the consecration, the royal court negotiated a truce of fifteen days with the Duke of Burgundy, who promised he would try to arrange the transfer of Paris to the Armagnacs while continuing negotiations for a definitive peace. At the end of the truce, Burgundy reneged on his promise. Joan and the Duke of Alençon favored a quick march on Paris, but divisions in Charles's court and continued peace negotiations with Burgundy led to a slow advance.


title: Joan of Arc

text: As the Armagnac army approached Paris, many of the towns along the way surrendered without a fight. On 15 August, the English forces under the Duke of Bedford confronted the Armagnacs near Montépilloy in a fortified position that the Armagnac commanders thought was too strong to assault. Joan rode out in front of the English positions to try to provoke them to attack. They refused, resulting in a standoff. The English retreated the following day. The Armagnacs continued their advance and launched an assault on Paris on 8 September. During the fighting, Joan was wounded in the leg by a crossbow bolt. She remained in a trench beneath the city walls until she was rescued after nightfall. The Armagnacs had suffered 1,500 casualties. The following morning, Charles ordered an end to the assault. Joan was displeased and argued that the attack should be continued. She and Alençon had made fresh plans to attack Paris, but Charles dismantled a bridge approaching Paris that was necessary for the attack and the Armagnac army had to retreat.


title: Joan of Arc

text: After the defeat at Paris, Joan's role in the French court diminished. Her aggressive independence did not agree with the court's emphasis on finding a diplomatic solution with Burgundy, and her role in the defeat at Paris reduced the court's faith in her.


title: Joan of Arc

text: After the defeat, scholars at the University of Paris argued that she failed to take Paris because her inspiration was not divine. In September, Charles disbanded the army, and Joan was not allowed to work with the Duke of Alençon again.


title: Joan of Arc

text: In October, Joan was sent as part of a force to attack the territory of , a mercenary who had served the Burgundians and English. The army besieged Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier, which fell after Joan encouraged a direct assault on 4 November. The army then tried unsuccessfully to take La-Charité-sur-Loire in November and December and had to abandon their artillery during the retreat. This defeat further diminished Joan's reputation.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan returned to court at the end of December, where she learned that she and her family had been ennobled by Charles as a reward for her services to him and the kingdom. Before the September attack on Paris, Charles had negotiated a four-month truce with the Burgundians, which was extended until Easter 1430. During this truce, the French court had no need for Joan.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The Duke of Burgundy began to reclaim towns which had been ceded to him by treaty but had not submitted to him. Compiègne was one such town of many in areas which the Armagnacs had recaptured over the previous few months. Joan set out with a company of volunteers at the end of March 1430 to relieve the town, which was under siege. This expedition did not have the explicit permission of Charles, who was still observing the truce. Some writers suggest that Joan's expedition to Compiègne without documented permission from the court was a desperate and treasonable action, but others have argued that she could not have launched the expedition without the financial support of the court.


title: Joan of Arc

text: In April, Joan arrived at Melun, which had expelled its Burgundian garrison. As Joan advanced, her force grew as other commanders joined her. Joan's troops advanced to Lagny-sur-Marne and defeated an Anglo-Burgundian force commanded by the mercenary Franquet d'Arras who was captured. Typically, he would have been ransomed or exchanged by the capturing force, but Joan allowed the townspeople to execute him after a trial.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan reached Compiègne on 14 May. After defensive forays against the Burgundian besiegers, she was forced to disband the majority of the army because it had become too difficult for the surrounding countryside to support. Joan and about 400 of her remaining soldiers entered the town.


title: Joan of Arc

text: On 23 May 1430, Joan accompanied an Armagnac force which sortied from Compiègne to attack the Burgundian camp at Margny, northeast of the town. The attack failed, and Joan was captured; She agreed to surrender to a pro-Burgundian nobleman named Lyonnel de Wandomme, a member of Jean de Luxembourg's contingent. who quickly moved her to his castle at Beaulieu-les-Fontaines near Noyes. After her first attempt to escape, she was transferred to Beaurevoir Castle. She made another escape attempt while there, jumping from a window of a tower and landing in a dry moat; she was injured but survived. In November, she was moved to the Burgundian town of Arras.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The English and Burgundians rejoiced that Joan had been removed as a military threat. The English negotiated with their Burgundian allies to pay Joan's ransom and transfer her to their custody. Bishop Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais, a partisan supporter of the Duke of Burgundy and the English crown, played a prominent part in these negotiations, which were completed in November. The final agreement called for the English to pay 10,000 livres tournois to obtain her from Luxembourg. After the English paid the ransom, they moved Joan to Rouen, their main headquarters in France. There is no evidence that Charles tried to save Joan once she was transferred to the English.


title: Joan of Arc

text: She was accused of having blasphemed by wearing men's clothes, of acting upon visions that were demonic, and of refusing to submit her words and deeds to the church because she claimed she would be judged by God alone. Joan's captors downplayed the secular aspects of her trial by submitting her judgment to an ecclesiastical court, but the trial was politically motivated. Joan testified that her visions had instructed her to defeat the English and crown Charles, and her success was argued to be evidence she was acting on behalf of God. If unchallenged, her testimony would invalidate the English claim to the rule of France and undermine the University of Paris, which supported the dual monarchy ruled by an English king.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's guilt could be used to compromise Charles's claims to legitimacy by showing that he had been consecrated by the act of a heretic. Cauchon served as the ordinary judge of the trial. The English subsidized the trial, including payments to Cauchon and Jean Le Maître, who represented the Inquisitor of France. All but 8 of the 131 clergy who participated in the trial were French and two thirds were associated with the University of Paris, but most were pro-Burgundian and pro-English.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Cauchon attempted to follow correct inquisitorial procedure, but the trial had many irregularities. Joan should have been in the hands of the church during the trial and guarded by women, but instead was imprisoned by the English and guarded by male soldiers under the command of the Duke of Bedford. Contrary to canon law, Cauchon had not established Joan's infamy before proceeding with the trial.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan was not read the charges against her until well after her interrogations began. The procedures were below inquisitorial standards, subjecting Joan to lengthy interrogations without legal counsel. One of the trial clerics stepped down because he felt the testimony was coerced and its intention was to entrap Joan; another challenged Cauchon's right to judge the trial and was jailed. There is evidence that the trial records were falsified.


title: Joan of Arc

text: During the trial, Joan showed great control. She induced her interrogators to ask questions sequentially rather than simultaneously, refer back to their records when appropriate, and end the sessions when she requested. Witnesses at the trial were impressed by her prudence when answering questions. For example, in one exchange she was asked if she knew she was in God's grace. The question was meant as a scholarly trap, as church doctrine held that nobody could be certain of being in God's grace. If she answered positively, she would have been charged with heresy; if negatively, she would have confessed her own guilt. Joan avoided the trap by stating that if she was not in God's grace, she hoped God would put her there, and if she was in God's grace then she hoped she would remain so. One of the court notaries at her trial later testified that the interrogators were stunned by her answer. To convince her to submit, Joan was shown the instruments of torture. When she refused to be intimidated, Cauchon met with about a dozen assessors (clerical jurors) to vote on whether she should be tortured. The majority decided against it.


title: Joan of Arc

text: In early May, Cauchon asked the University of Paris to deliberate on twelve articles summarizing the accusation of heresy. The university approved the charges. On 23 May, Joan was formally admonished by the court. The next day, she was taken out to the churchyard of the abbey of Saint-Ouen for public condemnation. As Cauchon began to read Joan's sentence, she agreed to submit. She was presented with an abjuration document, which included an agreement that she would not bear arms or wear men's clothing. It was read aloud to her, and she signed it.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Public heresy was a capital crime, in which an unrepentant or relapsed heretic could be given over to the judgment of the secular courts and punished by death. Having signed the abjuration, Joan was no longer an unrepentant heretic, but could be executed if convicted of relapsing into heresy.


title: Joan of Arc

text: As part of her abjuration, Joan was required to renounce wearing men's clothes. She exchanged her clothes for a woman's dress and allowed her head to be shaved. She was returned to her cell and kept in chains instead of being transferred to an ecclesiastical prison.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Witnesses at the rehabilitation trial stated that Joan was subjected to mistreatment and rape attempts, including one by an English noble, and that guards placed men's clothes in her cell, forcing her to wear them. Cauchon was notified that Joan had resumed wearing male clothing. He sent clerics to admonish her to remain in submission, but the English prevented them from visiting her.


title: Joan of Arc

text: On 28 May, Cauchon went to Joan's cell, along with several other clerics. According to the trial record, Joan said that she had gone back to wearing men's clothes because it was more fitting that she dress like a man while being held with male guards, and that the judges had broken their promise to let her go to mass and to release her from her chains. She stated that if they fulfilled their promises and placed her in a decent prison, she would be obedient. When Cauchon asked about her visions, Joan stated that the voices had blamed her for abjuring out of fear, and that she would not deny them again. As Joan's abjuration had required her to deny her visions, this was sufficient to convict her of relapsing into heresy and to condemn her to death. The next day, forty-two assessors were summoned to decide Joan's fate. Two recommended that she be abandoned to the secular courts immediately; the rest recommended that the abjuration be read to her again and explained. In the end, they voted unanimously that Joan was a relapsed heretic, and should be abandoned to the secular power, the English, for punishment.


title: Joan of Arc

text: At about the age of nineteen, Joan was executed on 30 May 1431. In the morning, she was allowed to receive the sacraments despite court process requiring they be denied to heretics. She was then taken to Rouen's Vieux-Marché (Old Marketplace), where she was publicly read her sentence of condemnation. At this point, she should have been turned over to the appropriate authority, the bailiff of Rouen, for secular sentencing, but instead was delivered directly to the English and tied to a tall plastered pillar for execution by burning. She asked to view a cross as she died, and was given one an English soldier made from a stick, which she kissed and placed next to her chest. A processional crucifix was fetched from the church of Saint-Saveur. She embraced it before her hands were bound, and it was held before her eyes during her execution. After her death, her remains were thrown into the Seine River.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The military situation was not changed by Joan's execution. Her triumphs had raised Armagnac morale, and the English were not able to regain momentum. Charles remained king of France, despite a rival coronation held for the ten-year-old Henry VI of England at Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in 1431. In 1435, the Burgundians signed the Treaty of Arras, abandoning their alliance with England. Twenty-two years after Joan's death, the war ended with a French victory at the Battle of Castillon in 1453, and the English were expelled from all of France except Calais.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's execution created a political liability for Charles, implying that his consecration as the king of France had been achieved through the actions of a heretic. On 15 February 1450, a few months after he regained Rouen, Charles ordered Guillaume Bouillé, a theologian and former rector of the University of Paris, to open an inquest. In a brief investigation, Bouillé interviewed seven witnesses of Joan's trial and concluded that the judgment of Joan as a heretic was arbitrary. She had been a prisoner of war treated as a political prisoner, and was put to death without basis.


title: Joan of Arc

text: In 1452, a second inquest into Joan's trial was opened by Cardinal Guillaume d'Estouteville, papal legate and relative of Charles, and Jean Bréhal, the recently-appointed Inquisitor of France, who interviewed about 20 witnesses. The inquest was guided by 27 articles describing how Joan's trial had been biased. Immediately after the inquest, d'Estouteville went to Orléans on 9 June and granted an indulgence to those who participated in the ceremonies in Joan's honor on 8 May commemorating the lifting of the siege.


title: Joan of Arc

text: For the next two years d'Estouteville and Bréhal worked on the case. Bréhal forwarded a petition from Joan's mother, Isabelle, and Joan's two brothers Jean and Pierre, to Pope Nicholas V in 1454. Bréhal submitted a summary of his findings to theologians and lawyers in France and Italy, as well as a professor at the University of Vienna, most of whom gave opinions favorable to Joan. After Nicholas V died in early 1455, the new pope Callixtus III gave permission for a rehabilitation trial, and appointed three commissioners to oversee the process: Jean Juvénal des Ursins, archbishop of Reims; Guillaume Chartier, bishop of Paris; and Richard Olivier de Longueil, bishop of Coutances. They chose Bréhal as Inquisitor.


title: Joan of Arc

text: The rehabilitation trial began on 7 November 1455 at Notre Dame Cathedral when Joan's mother publicly delivered a formal request for her daughter's rehabilitation, and ended on 7 July 1456 at Rouen Cathedral, having heard from about 115 witnesses. The court found that the original trial was unjust and deceitful; Joan's abjuration, execution and their consequences were nullified. In his summary of the trial, Bréhal suggested that Cauchon and the assessors who supported him might be guilty of malice and heresy. To emphasize the court's decision, a copy of the Articles of Accusation was formally torn up. The court ordered that a cross should be erected on the site of Joan's execution.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's visions played an important role in her condemnation, and her admission that she had returned to heeding them led to her execution. Theologians of the era believed that visions could have a supernatural source. The assessors at her trial focused on determining the specific source of Joan's visions, using an ecclesiastical form of (discernment of spirits). Because she was accused of heresy, they sought to show that her visions were false. The rehabilitation trial nullified Joan's sentence, but did not declare her visions authentic. In 1894, Pope Leo XIII pronounced that Joan's mission was divinely inspired.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Modern scholars have discussed possible neurological and psychiatric causes for her visions. Her visions have been described as hallucinations arising from epilepsy or a temporal lobe tuberculoma. Others have implicated ergot poisoning, schizophrenia, delusional disorder, or creative psychopathy induced by her early childhood rearing. One of the Promoters of the Faith at her 1903 canonization trial argued that her visions may have been manifestations of hysteria. Other scholars argue that Joan created some of the visions' specific details in response to the demands of the interrogators at her trial.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Many of these explanations have been challenged; the trial records designed to demonstrate that Joan was guilty of heresy are unlikely to provide the objective descriptions of symptoms needed to support a medical diagnosis.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's firm belief in the divinity of her visions strengthened her confidence, enabled her to trust herself, and gave her hope during her capture and trial.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's cross-dressing was the topic of five of the articles of accusation against her during the trial. In the view of the assessors, it was the emblem of her heresy. Her final condemnation began when she was found to have resumed wearing men's clothes, which was taken as a sign that she had relapsed into heresy.


title: Joan of Arc

text: From the time of her journey to Chinon to her abjuration, Joan usually wore men's clothes and cropped her hair in a male fashion. When she left Vaucouleurs to see the Dauphin in Chinon, Joan was said to have worn a black doublet, a black tunic, and a short black cap. By the time she was captured, she had acquired more elaborate outfits. At her trial, she was accused of wearing breeches, a mantle, a coat of mail, a doublet, hose joined to the doublet with twenty laces, tight boots, spurs, a breastplate, buskins, a sword, a dagger, and a lance. She was also described as wearing furs, a golden surcoat over her armor, and sumptuous riding habits made of precious cloth.


title: Joan of Arc

text: During the trial proceedings, Joan is not recorded as giving a practical reason why she cross-dressed. She stated that it was her own choice to wear men's clothes, and that she did so not at the request of men but by the command of God and his angels. She stated she would return to wearing women's clothes when she fulfilled her calling.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Although Joan's cross-dressing was used to justify her execution, the church's position on it was not clear. In general, it was seen as a sin, but there was no agreement about its severity. Thomas Aquinas stated that a woman may wear a man's clothes to hide herself from enemies or if no other clothes were available, and Joan did both, wearing them in enemy territory to get to Chinon, and in her prison cell after her abjuration when her dress was taken from her. Soon after the siege of Orléans was lifted, Jean Gerson said that Joan's male clothes and haircut were appropriate for her calling, as she was a warrior and men's clothes were more practical.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Cross-dressing may have helped her maintain her virginity by deterring rape and signaling her unavailability as a sexual object; scholars have stated that when she was imprisoned, wearing men's clothes would have only been a minor deterrent to rape as she was shackled most of the time. For most of her active life, Joan did not cross-dress to hide her gender. Rather, it may have functioned to emphasize her unique identity as , a model of virtue that transcends gender roles and inspires people.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan is one of the most studied people of the Middle Ages, partly because her two trials provided a wealth of documents. Her image, changing over time, has included being the savior of France, an obedient daughter of the Roman Catholic Church, an early feminist, and a symbol of freedom and independence.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's reputation as a military leader who helped drive the English from France began to form before her death. Just after Charles's coronation, Christine de Pizan wrote the poem "Ditié de Jehanne D'Arc", celebrating Joan as a supporter of Charles sent by Divine Providence; the poem captured the "surge of optimism" and "sense of wonder and gratitude" that "swept through the whole of the French" after the triumph at Orléans, according to Kennedy and Varty (1977). As early as 1429, Orléans began holding a celebration in honor of the raising of the siege on 8 May.


title: Joan of Arc

text: After Joan's execution, her role in the Orléans victory encouraged popular support for her rehabilitation. Joan became a central part of the annual celebration, and by 1435 a play, (Mystery of the Siege of Orléans), portrayed her as the vehicle of the divine will that liberated Orléans. The Orléans festival celebrating Joan continues in modern times.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Less than a decade after her rehabilitation trial, Pope Pius II wrote a brief biography describing her as the maid who saved the kingdom of France. Louis XII commissioned a full-length biography of her around 1500.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan's early legacy was closely associated with the divine right of the monarchy to rule France. During the French Revolution, her reputation came into question because of her association with the monarchy and religion, and the festival in her honor held at Orléans was suspended in 1793. In 1803, Napoleon Bonaparte authorized its renewal and the creation of a new statue of Joan at Orléans, stating: "The illustrious Joan ... proved that there is no miracle which French genius cannot accomplish when national independence is threatened."


title: Joan of Arc

text: Since then, she has become a prominent symbol as the defender of the French nation. After the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Joan became a rallying point for a new crusade to reclaim Lorraine, the province of her birth. The Third Republic held a patriotic civic holiday in her honor, on 8 May to celebrate her victory at Orléans. A series of French warships have been named for her. During World War I, her image was used to inspire victory. In World War II, all sides of the French cause appealed to her legacy: she was a symbol for Philippe Pétain in Vichy France, a model for Charles de Gaulle's leadership of the Free French, and an example for the Communist resistance. More recently, her association with the monarchy and national liberation has made her a symbol for the French far right, including the monarchist movement Action Française and the National Front Party. Joan's image has been used by the entire spectrum of French politics, and she is an important reference in political dialogue about French identity and unity.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan is a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. She was viewed as a religious figure in Orléans after the siege was lifted and an annual panegyric was pronounced there on her behalf until the 1800s. In 1849, the Bishop of Orlėans Félix Dupanloup delivered an oration that attracted international attention, and in 1869 petitioned Rome to begin beatification proceedings. She was beatified by Pope Pius X in 1909, and canonized on 16 May 1920 by Pope Benedict XV. Her feast day is 30 May, the anniversary of her execution. In an apostolic letter, Pope Pius XI declared Joan one of the patron saints of France on 2 March 1922.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan was canonized as a Virgin, not as a Christian martyr because she had been put to death by a canonically constituted court, which did not execute for her faith in Christ, but for her private revelation. Nevertheless, she has been popularly venerated as a martyr since her death: one who suffered for her modesty and purity,


title: Joan of Arc

text: and the strength of her convictions. Joan is also remembered as a visionary in the Church of England with a commemoration on 30 May. She is revered in the pantheon of the Cao Dai religion.


title: Joan of Arc

text: While Joan was alive, she was already being compared to biblical women heroes, such as Esther, Judith, and Deborah. Her claim of virginity, which signified her virtue and sincerity, was upheld by women of status from both the Armagnac and Burgundian-English sides of the Hundred Years' War: Yolande of Aragon, Charles's mother-in-law, and Anne of Burgundy, Duchess of Bedford.


title: Joan of Arc

text: Joan has been described as a model of an autonomous woman who challenged traditions of masculinity and femininity to be heard as an individual in a patriarchal culture—setting her own course by heeding the voices of her visions. She fulfilled the traditionally male role of a military leader, while maintaining her status as a valiant woman. Merging qualities associated with both genders, Joan has inspired numerous artistic and cultural works for many centuries. In the nineteenth century, hundreds of work of art about her—including biographies, plays, and musical scores—were created in France, and her story became popular as an artistic subject in Europe and North America. By the 1960s, she was the topic of thousands of books. Her legacy has become global, and inspires novels, plays, poems, operas, films, paintings, children's books, advertising, computer games, comics and popular culture across the world.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Jeffrey Leon Bridges (born December 4, 1949) is an American actor. He has received various accolades throughout his career spanning over seven decades, including an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards. Critic Pauline Kael wrote that Bridges "may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived."


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges comes from a prominent acting family and appeared on the television series "Sea Hunt" (1958–1960) alongside his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother, Beau Bridges. He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as an alcoholic singer in the 2009 film "Crazy Heart". Other Oscar-nominated roles include "The Last Picture Show" (1971), "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974), "Starman" (1984), "The Contender" (2000), "True Grit" (2010), and "Hell or High Water" (2016). Bridges has also starred in other roles such as "The Fabulous Baker Boys" (1989), "The Fisher King" (1991), "The Big Lebowski" (1998) and "Bad Times at the El Royale" (2018), along with the commercially successful films "King Kong" (1976), "Tron" (1982), "Iron Man" (2008), and "" (2010). In 2022, he returned to television for a role as a former CIA operative in "The Old Man".


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges was born on December 4, 1949, in Los Angeles, the son of actor Lloyd Bridges (1913–1998) and actress and writer Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson; 1915–2009). He is one of four children: older brother Beau Bridges (born 1941), who is also an actor; a younger sister Lucinda; and a brother named Garrett, who died of sudden infant death syndrome in 1948. His maternal grandfather was an immigrant from Liverpool, England.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges and his siblings were raised in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles. He shared a close relationship with his brother Beau, who acted as a surrogate father when their father was working. He graduated from University High School in 1967. At age 17 he toured with his father in a stage production of "Anniversary Waltz", and then moved to New York City, where he studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio. He also served in the United States Coast Guard Reserve as a boatswain's mate from 1967 to 1975 in San Luis Obispo, California, with a terminal rating of Boatswain's Mate Second Class.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges made his first screen appearance in "The Company She Keeps" (1951); the film was released shortly after his first birthday. In his youth, Bridges and brother Beau made occasional appearances on their father's show "Sea Hunt" (1958–1961) and the CBS anthology series "The Lloyd Bridges Show" (1962–1963). In 1969, he played Job Corps crew member Cal Baker in the "Lassie" TV series episode entitled "Success Story". In 1971, he played the lead role Mike in the TV movie "In Search of America". His first major role came in the 1971 film "The Last Picture Show", for which he garnered a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He next co-starred in the 1972 gritty boxing film "Fat City", directed by John Huston. In 1973, he starred as Junior Jackson in "The Last American Hero", a film based on the true story of NASCAR driver Junior Johnson. He was again nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance opposite Clint Eastwood in the 1974 film "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot". In 1976, he starred as the protagonist Jack Prescott in the first remake of "King Kong", opposite Jessica Lange. This film was a commercial success, earning $90 million worldwide, more than triple its $23 million budget, and also winning an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: In 1982, Bridges starred in one of his better-known roles in the science fiction film "Tron", in which he played Kevin Flynn, a video game programmer. That same year, he starred in "Kiss Me Goodbye", an American romantic comedy film directed by Robert Mulligan, with Sally Field. In 1984, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing an alien in "Starman". He also performed in the thriller "Against All Odds" (1984) and the crime drama "Jagged Edge" (1985).


title: Jeff Bridges

text: His role in "Fearless" (1993) is thought by some critics to be one of his best performances. One critic dubbed it a masterpiece; Pauline Kael wrote that he "may be the most natural and least self-conscious screen actor that has ever lived". In 1994, he starred as Lt. Jimmy Dove in the action film "Blown Away", opposite Tommy Lee Jones and Forest Whitaker. His real-life father Lloyd Bridges was also featured in the film, playing the uncle of Bridges' character. The film was not a financial success, managing to recoup $30 million of its $50 million budget at the box office, with its release a few weeks after another explosive-themed film, "Speed". On July 11, 1994, Bridges received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry. The star is located at 7065 Hollywood Boulevard. In 1998, he starred as what is arguably his most iconic role, The Dude, in the Coen brothers' film "The Big Lebowski".


title: Jeff Bridges

text: In 2000, he received his fourth Academy Award nomination, for his role in "The Contender". He also starred in the 2005 Terry Gilliam film "Tideland", his second with the director (the first being 1991's "The Fisher King" alongside Robin Williams). He shaved his trademark mane of hair to play the role of Obadiah Stane in the 2008 Marvel comic book adaptation "Iron Man". In July 2008, at the San Diego Comic-Con International, he appeared in a teaser, reprising his 1982 fan favorite role of Kevin Flynn for "", shot as concept footage for director Joseph Kosinski; this developed into a full 3D feature release in 2010.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges is one of the youngest actors ever to be nominated for an Academy Award (1972, age 22, Best Supporting Actor, "The Last Picture Show"), and one of the oldest ever to win (winning the Best Actor in 2010 at age 60 for "Crazy Heart"). "Crazy Heart" also won him the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges received his sixth Academy Award nomination for his role in "True Grit", a collaboration with the Coen brothers in which he starred alongside Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Hailee Steinfeld. Both the film and Bridges' performance as Rooster Cogburn, were critically praised. Bridges lost to Colin Firth, whom he had beaten for the Oscar in the same category the previous year. In 2016, Bridges appeared in the film "Hell or High Water", for which he received his seventh Academy Award nomination. For his contribution to films, he was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2019.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Referring to his career as an actor and his passion for music, Bridges says, "I dug what an actor did, but it took me a while to feel it, to truly appreciate the craft and the preparation. Plus, I was still playing music a lot, and I guess I had a hard time choosing: was I an actor or a musician, or could I be both?"


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges studied piano at a young age, strongly encouraged by his mother. While working on the 1980 film "Heaven's Gate", he often played guitar with his co-star, singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, between takes. His character in "Crazy Heart", Bad Blake, was later based partly on Kristofferson. In 1982, he voiced the character of Prince Lír in the animated film "The Last Unicorn", and in that role sang on two songs, including a duet with Mia Farrow. He released his debut album "Be Here Soon" on January 1, 2000. In 2005, Bridges, known as "The Dude" in the film "The Big Lebowski", showed up at a Lebowski Fest in Los Angeles singing and playing the film's theme song written by Bob Dylan, "Man in Me".


title: Jeff Bridges

text: On January 15, 2010, Bridges performed the song "I Don't Know" from "Crazy Heart" on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien". In the film "The Contender", in which he co-starred, Bridges recorded a version of Johnny Cash's standard "Ring of Fire" with Kim Carnes that played over the pivotal opening credits. In February 2010, he was among the nearly 80 musicians to sing on the charity-single remake of "We Are the World". On October 24, 2010, Bridges appeared at Neil Young's annual "Bridge School Benefit" concert and played a set with singer-songwriter Neko Case.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: On April 19, 2011, Country Music Television announced that Bridges had signed a recording contract with Blue Note Records/EMI Music Group. He worked with producer T Bone Burnett and released his second album, "Jeff Bridges," on August 16, 2011. On November 5, 2011, Bridges played Austin City Limits in support of this album.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: In 2015, he sang on the album "Strangers Again", performing a duet with Judy Collins of the song "Make Our Garden Grow" from "Candide" by Leonard Bernstein. The same year, he released an ambient/spoken-word album entitled "Sleeping Tapes". All proceeds from the album go directly to Bridges' charity No Kid Hungry.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges plays many guitars, including the Gretsch Chet Atkins Country Gentlemen Model G6122-19. In 2020 Bridges partnered with Breedlove Guitars to release his signature Oregon Concerto Bourbon CE with "All In This Together" scrawled across the fretboard.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: In 2013, Bridges wrote "The Dude and the Zen Master" with Bernie Glassman. Bridges found himself at a party with Glassman and Ram Dass and their conversation led to discussing the parallels between "The Dude" from "The Big Lebowski" and Zen Buddhism. The book was formed from what has been described as a "transcript of a five-day 'hang' on a Montana ranch."


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges has been an amateur photographer since high school. He began taking photographs on film sets during "Starman" at the suggestion of co-star Karen Allen in 1984, with his favorite camera, a Widelux F8 that his wife bought him. He published many of these photographs online and in a 2003 book entitled "Pictures: Photographs by Jeff Bridges". In 2013, he received an Infinity Award for his photos from the International Center of Photography in New York. A follow-up book, "Jeff Bridges: Pictures Volume Two", was published in 2019.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges narrated the documentary "Lost in La Mancha" (2002), about the making of a Terry Gilliam retelling of "Don Quixote", tentatively titled "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote", which would have starred Johnny Depp as Sancho Panza and Jean Rochefort as the quixotic hero. Bridges also narrated the documentaries National Geographic's "Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West" (2002, IMAX), Discovery Channel's "Raising the Mammoth" (2000), and ABC's "Heroes of Rock and Roll" (1979). He voiced the character Big Z in the animated picture "Surf's Up". He also hosted VH1's "Top 100 Greatest Albums of Rock and Roll" series in 2001. In 2016, he narrated the documentary "".


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges has performed TV commercial voiceover work as well, including Hyundai's 2007 "Think About It" advertising campaign, and the Duracell advertisements in the "Trusted Everywhere" campaign.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: On December 18, 2010, Bridges hosted NBC's "Saturday Night Live"; he had hosted the show before in 1983 with his brother, Beau. With the December 18, 2010, episode Bridges beat Sigourney Weaver's record for longest gap between hosting appearances on "SNL" (Weaver had a 24-year gap between her first time hosting in 1986 and her second time hosting in 2010, while Bridges had a 27-year gap between his first appearance in 1983 and his most recent one, also in 2010).


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges married Susan Geston in 1977. They had met while filming "Rancho Deluxe" (1975), on a ranch where Geston had been working as a waitress. They have three daughters: Isabelle Annie (born August 6, 1981); Jessica Lily "Jessie" (born June 14, 1983); and Haley Roselouise (born October 17, 1985). They also have a granddaughter, Grace (born March 31, 2011), from Isabelle.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges has studied Buddhism and has described himself as "a Buddhistly bent guy". On most days, he meditates for half an hour before beginning work on a film set. He has learned Transcendental Meditation.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: On October 19, 2020, Bridges announced that he had been diagnosed with lymphoma and has gone through chemotherapy.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: On September 12, 2021, Bridges announced that his cancer was in remission: "My cancer is in remission — the 9×12 [inch; ] mass has shrunk down to the size of a marble."


title: Jeff Bridges

text: Bridges also announced he contracted COVID-19 while in treatment and noted it was a difficult experience which he said made cancer "look like a piece of cake". He said he is now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.


title: Jeff Bridges

text: In 1984, Bridges and other entertainment industry leaders founded the End Hunger Network aimed at encouraging, stimulating and supporting action to end childhood hunger. He supported President Obama's initiative to End Childhood Hunger by 2015. In November 2010, Bridges became spokesman for the No Kid Hungry campaign of the organization Share our Strength. Its goal is to present and undertake a state-by-state strategy to end childhood hunger in the United States by 2015. Bridges also supports environmental causes and organizations such as the Amazon Conservation Team.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The Syrian civil war () is an ongoing multi-sided civil war in Syria fought between the Syrian Arab Republic led by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad (supported by domestic and foreign allies) and various domestic and foreign forces that oppose both the Syrian government and each other, in varying combinations.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Unrest in Syria began on 15 March 2011 as part of the wider 2011 Arab Spring protests out of discontent with the Syrian government, eventually escalating to an armed conflict after protests calling for Assad's removal were violently suppressed. The war is currently being fought by several factions. The Syrian Armed Forces and its domestic and international allies represent the Syrian Arab Republic and the Assad regime. Opposed to it is the Syrian Interim Government, a loose alliance of nationalist and Sunni-led opposition groups (whose defense forces consist of the Syrian National Army and the Free Syrian Army). Another faction is the Syrian Salvation Government, a coalition of Sunni Islamist rebel groups headed by Tahrir al-Sham. Independent of all of them is the de-facto autonomous territory of Rojava, whose armed wing is the mixed Kurdish-Arab Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). Other competing factions include Salafi Jihadist organisations such as the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL). The peak of the war was around 2015; violence in the country has since diminished, but the situation remains a crisis.


title: Syrian civil war

text: A number of foreign countries, such as Iran, Russia, Turkey, and the United States, have either directly involved themselves in the conflict or provided support to one or another faction. Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah support the Syrian Arab Republic and the Syrian Armed Forces militarily, with Russia conducting airstrikes and ground operations since September 2015. The U.S.-led international coalition, established in 2014 with the declared purpose of countering ISIL, has conducted airstrikes primarily against ISIL as well as some against government and pro-government targets. They have also deployed special forces and artillery units to engage ISIL on the ground. Since 2015, the U.S. has supported the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and its armed wing, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), materially, financially, and logistically. Turkish forces have fought the SDF, ISIL, and the Syrian government since 2016, but have also actively supported the Syrian opposition and currently occupy large swaths of northwestern Syria while engaging in significant ground combat. Between 2011 and 2017, fighting from the Syrian civil war spilled over into Lebanon as opponents and supporters of the Syrian government traveled to Lebanon to fight and attack each other on Lebanese soil, with ISIL and al-Nusra also engaging the Lebanese Army. Furthermore, while officially neutral, Israel has exchanged border fire and carried out repeated strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian forces, whose presence in western Syria it views as a threat.


title: Syrian civil war

text: International organizations have accused virtually all sides involved, including the Ba'athist Syrian government, ISIL, opposition rebel groups, Russia, Turkey, and the U.S.-led coalition of severe human rights violations and massacres. The conflict has caused a major refugee crisis, with millions fleeing mainly to neighboring countries Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. Over the course of the war, a number of peace initiatives have been launched, including the March 2017 Geneva peace talks on Syria led by the United Nations, but fighting has continued.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The non-religious Ba'ath Syrian Regional Branch government came to power through a coup d'état in 1963. For several years, Syria went through additional coups and changes in leadership, until in March 1971, General Hafez al-Assad, an Alawite, declared himself President. It marked the beginning of the domination of personality cults centred around the Assad dynasty that pervaded all aspects of Syrian daily life and was accompanied by a systematic suppression of civil and political freedoms; becoming the central feature of state propaganda. Authority in Ba'athist Syria is monopolised by three power-centres: Alawite clans, Ba'ath party and the armed forces; glued together by unwavering allegiance towards the Assad dynasty.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The Syrian Regional Branch remained the dominant political authority in what had been a one-party state until the first multi-party election to the People's Council of Syria was held in 2012. On 31 January 1973, Hafez al-Assad implemented a new constitution; leading to a national crisis. The 1973 Constitution entrusted Arab Socialist Baath party with the distinctive role as the "leader of the state and society"; empowering it to mobilise the civilians for party programmes, issue decrees to ascertain their loyalty and supervise all legal trade unions. Ba'athist ideology was imposed upon children as compulsory part of school curriculum and Syrian Armed Forces were tightly controlled to the Party. The constitution removed Islam from being recognised as the state religion and stripped existing provisions such as the president of Syria being required to be a Muslim. These measures caused widespread furore amongst the public; leading to fierce demonstrations in Hama, Homs and Aleppo organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and the "ulama". Assad regime violently crushed the Islamic revolts that occurred during 1976-1982, waged by revolutionaries from the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The Ba'ath party carefully constructed Assad as the guiding father figure of the party and modern Syrian nation; advocating the continuation of Assad dynastic rule of Syria. As part of the publicity efforts to brand the nation and Assad dynasty as inseparable; slogans such as "Assad or we burn the country", "Assad or to hell with the country" and "Hafez Assad, forever" became an integral part of the state and party discourse during the 1980s. Eventually the party organisation itself became a rubberstamp and the power structures became deeply dependent on sectarian affiliation to the Assad family and the central role of armed forces needed to crack down on dissent in the society. Critics of the regime have pointed out that deployment of violence is at the crux of Ba'athist Syria and describe it as "a dictatorship with genocidal tendencies". Upon Hafez al-Assad's death in 2000, his son Bashar al-Assad succeded him as the President of Syria.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Bashar's wife Asma, a Sunni Muslim born and educated in Britain, was initially hailed in the Western press a "rose in the desert". The couple once raised hopes amongst Syrian intellectuals and outside Western observers as wanting to implement economic and political reforms. However, Bashar failed to deliver on promised reforms; instead crushing the civil society groups, political reformists and democratic activists that emerged during the Damascus spring in the 2000s. Bashar Al-Assad claims that no 'moderate opposition' to his government exists, and that all opposition forces are jihadists focused on destroying the current secular leadership; his view was that terrorist groups operating in Syria are 'linked to the agendas of foreign countries'.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The total population in July 2018 was estimated at 19,454,263 people; ethnic groups – approximately Arab 50%, Alawite 15%, Kurd 10%, Levantine 10%, other 15% (includes Druze, Ismaili, Imami, Assyrian, Turkmen, Armenian); religions – Muslim 87% (official; includes Sunni 74% and Alawi, Ismaili, and Shia 13%), Christian 10% (mainly of Eastern Christian churches – may be smaller as a result of Christians fleeing the country), Druze 3% and Jewish (few remaining in Damascus and Aleppo).


title: Syrian civil war

text: Socioeconomic inequality increased significantly after free market policies were initiated by Hafez al-Assad in his later years, and it accelerated after Bashar al-Assad came to power. With an emphasis on the service sector, these policies benefited a minority of the nation's population, mostly people who had connections with the government, and members of the Sunni merchant class of Damascus and Aleppo. In 2010, Syria's nominal GDP per capita was only $2,834, comparable to Sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria and far lower than its neighbors such as Lebanon, with an annual growth rate of 3.39%, below most other developing countries.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The country also faced particularly high youth unemployment rates. At the start of the war, discontent against the government was strongest in Syria's poor areas, predominantly among conservative Sunnis. These included cities with high poverty rates, such as Daraa and Homs, and the poorer districts of large cities.


title: Syrian civil war

text: This coincided with the most intense drought ever recorded in Syria, which lasted from 2006 to 2011 and resulted in widespread crop failure, an increase in food prices and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. This migration strained infrastructure already burdened by the influx of some 1.5 million refugees from the Iraq War. The drought has been linked to anthropogenic global warming. Subsequent analysis, however, has challenged the narrative of the drought as a major contributor to the start of the war. Adequate water supply continues to be an issue in the ongoing civil war and it is frequently the target of military action.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The human rights situation in Syria has long been the subject of harsh critique from global organizations. The rights of free expression, association and assembly were strictly controlled in Syria even before the uprising. The country was under emergency rule from 1963 until 2011 and public gatherings of more than five people were banned. Security forces had sweeping powers of arrest and detention. Despite hopes for democratic change with the 2000 Damascus Spring, Bashar al-Assad was widely reported as having failed to implement any improvements. In 2010, he imposed a controversial national ban on female Islamic dresscodes such as faceveils across universities and expelled over a thousand female tutors and school teachers as part of the ban. A Human Rights Watch report issued just before the beginning of the 2011 uprising stated that Assad had failed to substantially improve the state of human rights since taking power.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Idlib demilitarization; Trump announces US withdrawal; Iraq strikes ISIL targets (September–December 2018)


title: Syrian civil war

text: ISIL attacks continue; US states conditions of withdrawal; Fifth inter-rebel conflict (January–May 2019)


title: Syrian civil war

text: Demilitarization agreement falls apart; 2019 Northwestern Syria offensive; Northern Syria Buffer Zone established (May–October 2019)


title: Syrian civil war

text: Northwestern offensive; Baylun airstrikes; Operation Spring Shield; Daraa clashes; Afrin bombing (late 2019; 2020)


title: Syrian civil war

text: There are numerous factions, both foreign and domestic, involved in the Syrian civil war. These can be divided in four main groups. First, Ba'athist Syria led by Bashar al-Assad and backed by his Russian and Iranian allies. Second, the Syrian opposition consisting of two alternative governments: i) the Syrian Interim Government, a big-tent coalition of democratic, Syrian nationalist and Islamic political groups whose defense forces consist of the Syrian National Army and Free Syrian Army. ii) the Syrian Salvation Government, a Sunni Islamist coalition led by Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham. Third, the Kurdish-dominated Rojava administration and its military-wing Syrian Democratic Forces supported by the United States. Fourth, the Global Jihadist camp consisting of Al-Qaeda affiliate Guardians of Religion Organisation and its rival Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Syrian government, the opposition and the SDF have all received support, militarily and diplomatically, from foreign countries, leading the conflict to often be described as a proxy war.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The major parties supporting the Syrian Government are Iran, Russia and Lebanese militia Hezbollah. Syrian rebel groups received political, logistic and military support from the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Britain, France, Israel, and the Netherlands. Under the aegis of operation Timber Sycamore and other clandestine activities, CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have trained and armed nearly 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year since 2012. Iraq had also been involved in supporting the Syrian government, but mostly against ISIL.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In June 2014, members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) crossed the border from Syria into northern Iraq, and took control of large swaths of Iraqi territory as the Iraqi Army abandoned its positions. Fighting between rebels and government forces also spilled over into Lebanon on several occasions. There were repeated incidents of sectarian violence in the North Governorate of Lebanon between supporters and opponents of the Syrian government, as well as armed clashes between Sunnis and Alawites in Tripoli.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Starting on 5 June 2014, ISIL seized swathes of territory in Iraq. As of 2014, the Syrian Arab Air Force used airstrikes targeted against ISIL in Raqqa and al-Hasakah in coordination with the Iraqi government.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Sarin, mustard agent and chlorine gas have been used during the conflict. Numerous casualties led to an international reaction, especially the 2013 Ghouta attacks. A UN fact-finding mission was requested to investigate reported chemical weapons attacks. In four cases UN inspectors confirmed the use of sarin gas. In August 2016, a confidential report by the United Nations and the OPCW explicitly blamed the Syrian military of Bashar al-Assad for dropping chemical weapons (chlorine bombs) on the towns of Talmenes in April 2014 and Sarmin in March 2015 and ISIS for using sulfur mustard on the town of Marea in August 2015.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The United States and the European Union have said the Syrian government has conducted several chemical attacks. Following the 2013 Ghouta attacks and international pressure, the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons began. In 2015 the UN mission disclosed previously undeclared traces of sarin compounds in a "military research site". After the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, the United States launched its first intentional attack against Syrian government forces.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In April 2020, the UN Security Council briefing was held on the findings of a global chemical weapons watchdog, Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which claimed that the Syrian air force used sarin and chlorine for multiple attacks, in 2017. The close allies of Syria, Russia and European countries debated on the issue, where the claims were dismissed by Moscow while many Western European countries called for accountability for the government's alleged actions. The UN Deputy ambassador from Britain, Jonathan Allen stated that report by OPCW's Investigation Identification Team (IIT) claimed that the Syrian government is responsible for using chemical weapons in the war on at least four occasions. The information was also noted in two UN-mandated investigations.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Syria is not a party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions and does not recognize the ban on the use of cluster bombs. The Syrian Army is reported to have begun using cluster bombs in September 2012. Steve Goose, director of the Arms Division at Human Rights Watch said "Syria is expanding its relentless use of cluster munitions, a banned weapon, and civilians are paying the price with their lives and limbs", "The initial toll is only the beginning because cluster munitions often leave unexploded bomblets that kill and maim long afterward".


title: Syrian civil war

text: Russian thermobaric weapons, also known as "fuel-air bombs", were used by the government side during the war. On 2 December 2015, "The National Interest" reported that Russia was deploying the TOS-1 Buratino multiple rocket launch system to Syria, which is "designed to launch massive thermobaric charges against infantry in confined spaces such as urban areas". One Buratino thermobaric rocket launcher "can obliterate a roughly area with a single salvo". Since 2012, rebels have said that the Syrian Air Force (government forces) is using thermobaric weapons against residential areas occupied by the rebel fighters, such as during the Battle of Aleppo and also in Kafr Batna. A panel of United Nations human rights investigators reported that the Syrian government used thermobaric bombs against the strategic town of Qusayr in March 2013. In August 2013, the BBC reported on the use of napalm-like incendiary bombs on a school in northern Syria.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Several types of anti-tank missiles are in use in Syria. Russia has sent 9M133 Kornet, third-generation anti-tank guided missiles to the Syrian Government whose forces have used them extensively against armour and other ground targets to fight Jihadists and rebels. U.S.-made BGM-71 TOW missiles are one of the primary weapons of rebel groups and have been primarily provided by the United States and Saudi Arabia. The U.S. has also supplied many Eastern European sourced 9K111 Fagot launchers and warheads to Syrian rebel groups under its Timber Sycamore program.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In June 2017, Iran attacked ISIL targets in the Deir ez-Zor area in eastern Syria with Zolfaghar ballistic missiles fired from western Iran, in the first use of mid-range missiles by Iran in 30 years. According to Jane's Defence Weekly, the missiles travelled 650–700 kilometres.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The successive governments of Hafez and Bashar al-Assad have been closely associated with the country's minority Alawite religious group, an offshoot of Shia, whereas the majority of the population, and most of the opposition, is Sunni. Alawites started to be threatened and attacked by dominantly Sunni rebel fighting groups like al-Nusra Front and the FSA since December 2012 (see Sectarianism and minorities in the Syrian Civil War#Alawites).


title: Syrian civil war

text: A third of 250,000 Alawite men of military age have been killed fighting in the Syrian civil war. In May 2013, SOHR stated that out of 94,000 killed during the war, at least 41,000 were Alawites.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Many Syrian Christians reported that they had fled after they were targeted by the anti-government rebels. (See: Sectarianism and minorities in the Syrian Civil War#Christians.)


title: Syrian civil war

text: The Druze community in Syria has been divided by the civil war, and has experienced persecution by Islamist rebels, ISIL, the government and the government's Hezbollah allies. (See: Sectarianism and minorities in the Syrian Civil War#Druze.)


title: Syrian civil war

text: As militias and non-Syrian Shia—motivated by pro-Shia sentiment rather than loyalty to the Assad government—have taken over fighting the opposition from the weakened Syrian Army, fighting has taken on a more sectarian nature. One opposition leader has said that the Shia militias often "try to occupy and control the religious symbols in the Sunni community to achieve not just a territorial victory but a sectarian one as well"—reportedly occupying mosques and replacing Sunni icons with pictures of Shia leaders. According to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, human rights abuses have been committed by the militias including "a series of sectarian massacres between March 2011 and January 2014 that left 962 civilians dead".


title: Syrian civil war

text: The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. The region does not claim to pursue full independence but autonomy within a federal and democratic Syria. Rojava consists of self-governing sub-regions in the areas of Afrin, Jazira, Euphrates, Raqqa, Tabqa, Manbij and Deir Ez-Zor. The region gained its de facto autonomy in 2012 in the context of the ongoing Rojava conflict, in which its official military force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), has taken part.


title: Syrian civil war

text: While entertaining some foreign relations, the region is not officially recognized as autonomous by the government of Syria or any state except for the Catalan Parliament. The AANES has widespread support for its universal democratic, sustainable, autonomous pluralist, equal, and feminist policies in dialogues with other parties and organizations. Northeastern Syria is polyethnic and home to sizeable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian populations, with smaller communities of ethnic Turkmen, Armenians, Circassians, and Yazidis.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The supporters of the region's administration state that it is an officially secular polity with direct democratic ambitions based on an anarchistic, feminist, and libertarian socialist ideology promoting decentralization, gender equality, environmental sustainability, social ecology and pluralistic tolerance for religious, cultural and political diversity, and that these values are mirrored in its constitution, society, and politics, stating it to be a model for a federalized Syria as a whole, rather than outright independence. The region's administration has also been accused by some partisan and non-partisan sources of authoritarianism, support of the Syrian government, Kurdification, and displacement. However, despite this the AANES has been the most democratic system in Syria, with direct open elections, universal equality, respecting human rights within the region, as well as defense of minority and religious rights within Syria.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In March 2015, the Syrian Information Minister announced that his government considered recognizing Kurdish autonomy "within the law and constitution". While the region's administration was not invited to the Geneva III peace talks on Syria, or any of the earlier talks, Russia in particular called for the region's inclusion and did to some degree carry the region's positions into the talks, as documented in Russia's May 2016 draft for a new constitution for Syria.<ref name="Now.MMedia/Al-Akhbar"></ref>


title: Syrian civil war

text: An analysis released in June 2017 described the region's "relationship with the government fraught but functional" and a "semi-cooperative dynamic". In late September 2017, Syria's Foreign Minister said that Damascus would consider granting Kurds more autonomy in the region once ISIL was defeated.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 13 October 2019, the SDF announced that it had reached an agreement with the Syrian Army which allowed the latter to enter the SDF-held cities of Manbij and Kobani in order to dissuade a Turkish attack on those cities as part of the cross-border offensive by Turkish and Turkish-backed Syrian rebels. The Syrian Army also deployed in the north of Syria together with the SDF along the Syrian-Turkish border and entered into several SDF-held cities such as Ayn Issa and Tell Tamer. Following the creation of the Second Northern Syria Buffer Zone the SDF stated that it was ready to work cooperatively with the Syrian Army if a political settlement between the Syrian government and the SDF was achieved.


title: Syrian civil war

text: According to information gathered in December 2021, Iraqi authorities have returned 100 Iraqi fighters from the ISIL (ISIS) group who were being held by Kurdish forces in northeast Syria.


title: Syrian civil war

text: As of 2022, the main military threat and conflict faced by Rojava's official defense force, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), are firstly, an ongoing conflict with ISIS; and secondly, ongoing concerns of possible invasion of the northeast regions of Syria by Turkish forces, in order to strike Kurdish groups in general, and Rojava in particular. An official report by the Rojava government noted Turkey-backed militias as the main threat to the region of Rojava and its government.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In May 2022 Turkish and opposition Syrian officials said that Turkey's Armed Forces and the Syrian National Army are planning a new operation against the SDF, composed mostly of the YPG/YPJ. The new operation is set to resume efforts to create 30-kilometer (18.6-mile) wide "safe zones" along Turkey's border with Syria, President Erdoğan said in a statement. The operation aims at the Tal Rifaat and Manbij regions west of the Euphrates and other areas further east. Meanwhile, Ankara is in talks with Moscow over the operation. President Erdoğan reiterated his determination for the operation on 8 August 2022.


title: Syrian civil war

text: , 3.8 million have been made refugees. , 1 in 3 of Syrian refugees (about 667,000 people) sought safety in Lebanon (normally 4.8 million population). Others have fled to Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. Turkey has accepted 1,700,000 (2015) Syrian refugees, half of whom are spread around cities and a dozen camps placed under the direct authority of the Turkish Government. Satellite images confirmed that the first Syrian camps appeared in Turkey in July 2011, shortly after the towns of Deraa, Homs, and Hama were besieged. In September 2014, the UN stated that the number of Syrian refugees had exceeded 3 million. According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Sunnis are leaving for Lebanon and undermining Hezbollah's status. The Syrian refugee crisis has caused the "Jordan is Palestine" threat to be diminished due to the onslaught of new refugees in Jordan. Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III Laham says more than 450,000 Syrian Christians have been displaced by the conflict. , the European Union has reported that there are 13.5 million refugees in need of assistance in the country. Australia is being appealed to rescue more than 60 women and children stuck in Syria's Al-Hawl camp ahead of a potential Turkish invasion.


title: Syrian civil war

text: A major statement from NGO ACT Alliance found that millions of Syrian refugees remain displaced in countries around Syria. This includes around 1.5 million refugees in Lebanon. Also the report found that refugees in camps in north-eastern Syria have tripled this year.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Numerous refugees remain in local refugee camps. Conditions there are reported to be severe, especially with winter approaching.


title: Syrian civil war

text: 4,000 people are housed at the Washokani Camp. No organizations are assisting them other than the Kurdish Red Cross. Numerous camp residents have called for assistance from international groups.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 30 December 2019, over 50 Syrian refugees, including 27 children, were welcomed in Ireland, where they started afresh in their new temporary homes at the Mosney Accommodation Centre in Co Meath. The migrant refugees were pre-interviewed by Irish officials under the Irish Refugee Protection Programme (IRPP).


title: Syrian civil war

text: As of 2022 there are over 5.6 million refugees. Over 3.7 million of those (about 65%) are in Turkey. These figures have seen a lot of blame lain on refugees across the political spectrum in the country. They are being blamed for the worsening economic crisis. Measures have been put in place to "drive them out" including raised fees on utilities such water and services such as marriage licences. There has been an increase on attacks targeting Syrian refugees in the country.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Another aspect of the post-war years will be how to repatriate the millions of refugees. The Syrian government has put forward a law commonly known as "law 10", which could strip refugees of property, such as damaged real estate. There are also fears among some refugees that if they return to claim this property they will face negative consequences, such as forced conscription or prison. The Syrian government has been criticized for using this law to reward those who have supported the government. However, the government said this statement was false and has expressed that it wants the return of refugees from Lebanon. In December 2018, it was also reported that the Syrian government has started to seize property under an anti-terrorism law, which is affecting government opponents negatively, with many losing their property. Some people's pensions have also been cancelled.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Erdogan said that Turkey expects to resettle about 1 million refugees in the "buffer zone" that it controls. Erdogan claimed that Turkey had spent billions on approximately five million refugees now being housed in Turkey; and called for more funding from wealthier nations and from the EU. This plan raised concerns amongst Kurds about displacement of existing communities and groups in that area.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The violence in Syria caused millions to flee their homes. As of March 2015, Al-Jazeera estimate 10.9 million Syrians, or almost half the population, have been displaced. Violence erupted due to the ongoing crisis in northwest Syria has forced 6,500 children to flee every day over the last week of January 2020. The recorded count of displaced children in the area has reached more than 300,000 since December 2019.


title: Syrian civil war

text: As of 2022, there are 6.2 million internally displaced persons in Syria according to United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 2.5 million of those are children. 2017 alone saw the displacement of at least 1.8 million people, many of them being displaced for the second and third time.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Hundreds of boys are being held hostage by ISIS. As of 25 January 2022, "The New York Times" stated that the fight over a prison in northeastern Syria has brought attention to the plight of thousands of foreign children who were brought to Syria by their parents to join the Islamic State caliphate and have been detained for three years in camps and prisons in the region, abandoned by their home countries.


title: Syrian civil war

text: An estimated 40,000 foreigners, including children, travelled to Syria to fight for the caliphate or work for it. Thousands of them had brought their small children with them. There were also other children born there. When ISIS lost control of the last piece of territory in Syria, Baghuz, three years ago, surviving women and young children were detained in camps, while suspected militants and boys, some as young as 10, were imprisoned.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Furthermore, when the boys in the camps reach the age of adolescence, they are usually transferred to Hasaka's Sinaa prison, where they are packed into overcrowded cells with no access to sunlight. According to prison guards in the area, there is insufficient food and medical attention. When the boys reach the age of 18, they are sent to the regular prison population, where wounded ISIS members are placed three to a bed.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 2 January 2013, the United Nations stated that 60,000 had been killed since the civil war began, with UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay saying "The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking". Four months later, the UN's updated figure for the death toll had reached 80,000. On 13 June 2013, the UN released an updated figure of people killed since fighting began, the figure being exactly 92,901, for up to the end of April 2013. Navi Pillay, UN high commissioner for human rights, stated that: "This is most likely a minimum casualty figure". The real toll was guessed to be over 100,000. Some areas of the country have been affected disproportionately by the war; by some estimates, as many as a third of all deaths have occurred in the city of Homs.


title: Syrian civil war

text: One problem has been determining the number of "armed combatants" who have died, due to some sources counting rebel fighters who were not government defectors as civilians. At least half of those confirmed killed have been estimated to be combatants from both sides, including 52,290 government fighters and 29,080 rebels, with an additional 50,000 unconfirmed combatant deaths. In addition, UNICEF reported that over 500 children had been killed by early February 2012, and another 400 children have been reportedly arrested and tortured in Syrian prisons; both of these reports have been contested by the Syrian government. Additionally, over 600 detainees and political prisoners are known to have died under torture. In mid-October 2012, the opposition activist group SOHR reported the number of children killed in the conflict had risen to 2,300, and in March 2013, opposition sources stated that over 5,000 children had been killed. In January 2014, a report was released detailing the systematic killing of more than 11,000 detainees of the Syrian government.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 20 August 2014, a new U.N. study concluded that at least 191,369 people have died in the Syrian conflict. The UN thereafter stopped collecting statistics, but a study by the Syrian Centre for Policy Research released in February 2016 estimated the death toll to be 470,000, with 1.9m wounded (reaching a total of 11.5% of the entire population either wounded or killed).


title: Syrian civil war

text: A report by the pro-opposition SNHR in 2018 mentioned 82000 victims that had been forcibly disappeared by the Syrian government, added to 14.000 confirmed deaths due to torture.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 15 April 2017, a convoy of buses carrying evacuees from the besieged Shia towns of al-Fu'ah and Kafriya, which were surrounded by the Army of Conquest, was attacked by a suicide bomber west of Aleppo, killing more than 126 people, including at least 80 children.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 1 January 2020, at least eight civilians, including four children, were killed in a rocket attack on a school in Idlib by Syrian government forces, the Syrian Human Rights Observatory (SOHR) said.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In January 2020, UNICEF warned that children were bearing the brunt of escalating violence in northwestern Syria. More than 500 children were wounded or killed during the first three quarters of 2019, and over 65 children fell victim to the war in December alone.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Over 380,000 people were killed since the war in Syria started nine years ago, war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on 4 January 2020. The death toll comprises civilians, government soldiers, militia members and foreign troops.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In an airstrike by Russian forces loyal to the Syrian government, at least five civilians were killed, out of which four belonged to the same family. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed that the death toll included three children following the attack in the Idlib region on 18 January 2020.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 30 January 2020, Russian air strikes on a hospital and a bakery killed over 10 civilians in Syria's Idlib region. Moscow immediately rejected the allegation.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 23 June 2020, Israeli raids killed seven fighters, including two Syrian in a central province. State media cited a military official as saying the attack targeted posts in rural areas of Hama province.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In just 4 days after the turn of the year 2022, two children were killed and 5 others injured in northwest Syria. In 2021 alone, over 70% of violent attacks against children have been recorded in the region


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 14 January 2022, one person was killed by a car bomb and several others were wounded in the city of Azaz in northwest Syria, three people were wounded at a marketplace in a suspected suicide bombing in the town of al Bab and another suicide bomb went off in the city of Afrin at a roundabout


title: Syrian civil war

text: According to various human rights organizations and United Nations, human rights violations have been committed by both the government and the rebels, with the "vast majority of the abuses having been committed by the Syrian government".


title: Syrian civil war

text: According to three international lawyers, Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution. Experts said this evidence was more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that had emerged from the then 34-month crisis.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The UN also reported in 2014 that "siege warfare is employed in a context of egregious human rights and international humanitarian law violations. The warring parties do not fear being held accountable for their acts". Armed forces of both sides of the conflict blocked access of humanitarian convoys, confiscated food, cut off water supplies and targeted farmers working their fields. The report pointed to four places besieged by the government forces: Muadamiyah, Daraya, Yarmouk camp and Old City of Homs, as well as two areas under siege of rebel groups: Aleppo and Hama. In Yarmouk Camp 20,000 residents faced death by starvation due to blockade by the Syrian government forces and fighting between the army and Jabhat al-Nusra, which prevents food distribution by UNRWA. In July 2015, the UN removed Yarmouk from its list of besieged areas in Syria, despite not having been able deliver aid there for four months, and declined to say why it had done so. After intense fighting in April/May 2018, Syrian government forces finally took the camp, its population now reduced to 100–200.


title: Syrian civil war

text: ISIS forces have been criticized by the UN of using public executions and killing of captives, amputations, and lashings in a campaign to instill fear. "Forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham have committed torture, murder, acts tantamount to enforced disappearance and forced displacement as part of attacks on the civilian population in Aleppo and Raqqa governorates, amounting to crimes against humanity", said the report from 27 August 2014. ISIS also persecuted gay and bisexual men.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions have also been a feature since the Syrian uprising began. An Amnesty International report, published in November 2015, stated the Syrian government has forcibly disappeared more than 65,000 people since the beginning of the Syrian civil war. According to a report in May 2016 by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 60,000 people have been killed since March 2011 through torture or from poor humanitarian conditions in Syrian government prisons.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In February 2017, Amnesty International published a report which stated the Syrian government murdered an estimated 13,000 persons, mostly civilians, at the Saydnaya military prison. They stated the killings began in 2011 and were still ongoing. Amnesty International described this as a "policy of deliberate extermination" and also stated that "These practices, which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, are authorised at the highest levels of the Syrian government". Three months later, the United States State Department stated a crematorium had been identified near the prison. According to the U.S., it was being used to burn thousands of bodies of those killed by the government's forces and to cover up evidence of atrocities and war crimes. Amnesty International expressed surprise at the reports about the crematorium, as the photographs used by the US are from 2013 and they did not see them as conclusive, and fugitive government officials have stated that the government buries those its executes in cemeteries on military grounds in Damascus. The Syrian government said the reports were not true.


title: Syrian civil war

text: By July 2012, the human rights group Women Under Siege had documented over 100 cases of rape and sexual assault during the conflict, with many of these crimes reported to have been perpetrated by the Shabiha and other pro-government militias. Victims included men, women, and children, with about 80% of the known victims being women and girls.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 11 September 2019, the UN investigators said that air strikes conducted by the US-led coalition in Syria have killed or wounded several civilians, denoting that necessary precautions were not taken leading to potential war crimes.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In late 2019, as the violence intensified in north-west Syria, thousands of women and children were reportedly kept under "inhumane conditions" in a remote camp, said UN-appointed investigators. In October 2019, Amnesty International stated that it had gathered evidence of war crimes and other violations committed by Turkish and Turkey-backed Syrian forces who are said to "have displayed a shameful disregard for civilian life, carrying out serious violations and war crimes, including summary killings and unlawful attacks that have killed and injured civilians".


title: Syrian civil war

text: According to a new report by U.N.-backed investigators into the Syrian civil war, young girls aged nine and above, have been raped and inveigled into sexual slavery. While, boys have been put through torture and forcefully trained to execute killings in public. Children have been attacked by sharpshooters and lured by bargaining chips to pull out ransoms.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 6 April 2020, the United Nations published its investigation into the attacks on humanitarian sites in Syria. The council in its reports said, it had examined 6 sites of attacks and concluded that the airstrikes had been carried out by the "Government of Syria and/or its allies." However, the report was criticized for being partial towards Russia and not naming it, despite proper evidence. "The refusal to explicitly name Russia as a responsible party working alongside the Syrian government … is deeply disappointing," the HRW quoted.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 27 April 2020, the Syrian Network for Human Rights reported continuation of multiple crimes in the month of March and April in Syria. The rights organization billed that Syrian regime decimated 44 civilians, including six children, during the unprecedented times of COVID-19. It also said, Syrian forces held captive 156 people, while committing a minimum of four attacks on vital civilian facilities. The report further recommended that the UN impose sanctions on the Bashar al-Assad regime, if it continues to commit human rights violation.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 8 May 2020, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, raised serious concern that rebel groups, including ISIL terrorist fighters, may be using the COVID-19 pandemic as "an opportunity to re-group and inflict violence in the country".


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 21 July 2020, the Syrian government forces carried out an attack and killed two civilians with four Grad rockets in western al-Bab sub-district.


title: Syrian civil war

text: On 14 January 2022, in the rebel-held city of Azaz in northwest Syria, a car bomb went off killing one and wounding several bystanders. According to a rescue worker, an improvised explosive device had been housed inside a car and then the car was planted near a local transport office in the city which is close to the Turkish border. In the town of al Bab, a suicide bomb went off wounding three and in the city of Afrin, another suicide bomb went off at a roundabout. All these three bombings happened in a span of hours and minutes from each other.


title: Syrian civil war

text: According to Aljazeera, a rocket attack on a northern Syrian town controlled by Turkey-backed opposition fighters killed six civilians and injured more than a dozen others on 21 January 2022. According to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, it was unclear who fired the artillery shells, but the attack came from a region populated by Kurdish fighters and Syrian government forces.


title: Syrian civil war

text: After an attack on a Syrian jail on 23 January 2022, over 120 individuals were killed in an ongoing conflict between Kurdish-led troops and ISIL (ISIS) fighters. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, "at least 77 IS members and 39 Kurdish fighters, including internal security forces, prison guards and counter-terrorism forces were killed" in the attack.


title: Syrian civil war

text: As the conflict has expanded across Syria, many cities have been engulfed in a wave of crime as fighting caused the disintegration of much of the civilian state, and many police stations stopped functioning. Rates of theft increased, with criminals looting houses and stores. Rates of kidnappings increased as well. Rebel fighters were seen stealing cars and, in one instance, destroying a restaurant in Aleppo where Syrian soldiers had been seen eating.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Local National Defense Forces commanders often engaged "in war profiteering through protection rackets, looting, and organized crime". NDF members were also implicated in "waves of murders, robberies, thefts, kidnappings, and extortions throughout government-held parts of Syria since the formation of the organization in 2013", as reported by the Institute for the Study of War.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Criminal networks have been used by both the government and the opposition during the conflict. Facing international sanctions, the Syrian government relied on criminal organizations to smuggle goods and money in and out of the country. The economic downturn caused by the conflict and sanctions also led to lower wages for Shabiha members. In response, some Shabiha members began stealing civilian properties and engaging in kidnappings. Rebel forces sometimes rely on criminal networks to obtain weapons and supplies. Black market weapon prices in Syria's neighboring countries have significantly increased since the start of the conflict. To generate funds to purchase arms, some rebel groups have turned towards extortion, theft, and kidnapping.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Syria has become the chief location for manufacturing of Captagon, an illegal amphetamine. Drugs manufactured in Syria have found their way across the Gulf, Jordan and Europe but have at times been intercepted. In January 2022, a Jordanian army officer was shot and killed and three army personnel injured after a shoot out erupted between drug smugglers and the army. The Jordanian army has said that it shot down a drone in 2021 that was being used to smuggle a substantial amount of drugs across the Jordanian border.


title: Syrian civil war

text: The World Health Organization has reported that 35% of the country's hospitals are out of service. Fighting makes it impossible to undertake the normal vaccination programs. The displaced refugees may also pose a disease risk to countries to which they have fled. 400,000 civilians were isolated by the Siege of Eastern Ghouta from April 2013 to April 2018, resulting in acutely malnourished children according to the United Nations Special Advisor, Jan Egeland, who urged the parties for medical evacuations. 55,000 civilians are also isolated in the Rukban refugee camp between Syria and Jordan, where humanitarian relief access is difficult due to the harsh desert conditions. Humanitarian aid reaches the camp only sporadically, sometimes taking three months between shipments.


title: Syrian civil war

text: Formerly rare infectious diseases have spread in rebel-held areas brought on by poor sanitation and deteriorating living conditions. The diseases have primarily affected children. These include measles, typhoid, hepatitis, dysentery, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough and the disfiguring skin disease leishmaniasis. Of particular concern is the contagious and crippling Poliomyelitis. As of late 2013 doctors and international public health agencies have reported more than 90 cases. Critics of the government complain that, even before the uprising, it contributed to the spread of disease by purposefully restricting access to vaccination, sanitation and access to hygienic water in "areas considered politically unsympathetic".


title: Syrian civil war

text: In June 2020, the United Nations reported that after more than nine years of war, Syria was falling into an even deeper crisis and economic deterioration as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As of 26 June, a total of 248 people were infected by COVID-19, out of which nine people lost their lives. Restrictions on the importation of medical supplies, limited access to essential equipment, reduced outside support and ongoing attacks on medical facilities left Syria's health infrastructure in peril, and unable to meet the needs of its population. Syrian communities were additionally facing unprecedented levels of hunger crisis.


title: Syrian civil war

text: In September 2022, the UN representative in Syria reported that several regions in the country were witnessing a cholera outbreak. UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator Imran Riza called for an urgent response to contain the outbreak, saying that it posed "a serious threat to people in Syria". The outbreak was linked to the use of contaminated water for growing crops and the reliance of people on unsafe water sources.