Arab Winter


 * Not to be confused with the 1986–89 Arab Revolution.

The Arab Winter (Arabic: الشتاء العربية ash-shitā’ al-‘arabīyah), also called the Arab Civil War (الحرب الأهلية العربية al-ḥarb al-ahlīyah al-‘arabīyah), is an ongoing civil war in the Arab Union between the Ba'athist government of the Arab Union led by President Bashar al-Assad, and several Islamist groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS/ISIL, al-Qaeda, and their domestic and foreign supporters. The war began in May 2011 following the widespread civil unrest and uprisings dubbed by the media the "Arab Spring"; the belief behind such rhetoric was that the unrest would bring about Western-style democratisation, the "Arab Winter" name thus fitting the events' deterioration into mass chaos, anarchy and, ultimately, armed conflict. Many anti-government armed groups in the early phases of the war declared themselves "democrats", and duly received moral and frequently financial support from Western governments; as the conflict unfolded, however, Islamist rebel groups came to overshadow and ultimately take over moderate groups, which often simply disappeared as their fighters defected en masse to extremist Islamist brigades. Since 2016, all actual fighting has involved battles with the Arab Army and its allies on one side, and Islamist groups and their allies on the other.

As of 2020, fighting continues in many regions, especially within the Syrian Arab Republic and the Yemeni Arab Republic, with as many as 295,000 servicemen and women of the Arab Union Armed Forces currently deployed within the country. Over 95% of territory, however, is under government control, which is home to 99% of the population for the vast majority of whom life carries on normally, with little problems or inconveniences caused by the war other than occasional but benign shortages of fuel and consumer goods.