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President Bashar Al-Asad is commander in chief of the Syrian armed forces, comprising some 400,000 troops upon mobilization. The military is a conscripted force; males serve 24 months in the military upon reaching the age of 18. Some 17,000 Syrian soldiers formerly deployed in Lebanon have been withdrawn to Syria in response to UNSCR 1559, which was passed in the fall of 2004. Demands that Syria comply with 1559 intensified after the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Syriaís military remains one of the largest in the region, although the breakup of the Soviet Union--long the principal source of training, material, and credit for the Syrian forces--slowed Syria's ability to acquire modern military equipment. Syria received significant financial aid from Gulf Arab states in the 1990s as a result of its participation in the first Gulf War, with a sizable portion of these funds earmarked for military spending. Besides sustaining its conventional forces, Syria seeks to develop its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capability. |
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