Early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war

Early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war
	Part of the Syrian revolution and the Syrian civil war
	; Syrian Arab Army checkpoint in Douma, January 2012
Date	29 July 2011 – 20 April 2012
Location	Syria, neighbouring countries
Result	UN-mediated truce:; General cease of hostilities in late April and early May; Cease-fire collapse and conflict escalation by June 2012;
Belligerents
Syrian government Syrian Armed Forces Syrian Army Republican Guard; ; Syrian Air Force; Syrian Navy; ; Syrian Police; Security Agencies; Ba'ath Party militias; Shabiha; ; Supported by:; Iran; Russia; Belarus;	Syrian opposition Free Syrian Army; Syrian Revolution General Commission; Free Officers Movement; Syrian Liberation Army; Syrian Revolutionary Front; Ahrar al-Sham; Al-Nusra Front; ; Fatah al-Islam; Foreign Mujahedeen; Supported by:; NATO; Saudi Arabia; Qatar; Turkey;
Commanders and leaders
Bashar al-Assad; (President of Syria); Adel Safar; (Prime Minister of Syria); Dawoud Rajiha; (Defense Minister); Fahd Jassem al-Freij; (Chief Of Staff, Syrian Army); Maher al-Assad; (4th Division Commander); Mohammad Ibrahim al-Shaar; (Interior Minister); Assef Shawkat; (Deputy Defense Minister); Walid Muallem; (Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Minister)	Riad al-Asaad; (Free Syrian Army commander); Mustafa Ahmed al-Sheikh; (Higher Military Council head); Hussein Harmoush (POW); (Free Officers Movement commander, until August 2011); Zahran Alloush; (Liwa al Islam commander); Hassan Aboud; (Ahrar al Sham Commander); Abu Mohammad al-Julani; ( Al-Nusra Front commander)
Strength
Syrian Army: ~60,000; Security agencies and affiliated paramilitaries: ~200,000; Ba'ath Party militias: tens of thousands; Shabiha: 5,000–10,000	60,000 fighters; (Rebel claim)
Casualties and losses
Syrian security forces:; 3,770 (opposition sources)–3,857 (government sources: 15 March 2011–21 June 2012) soldiers and policemen killed	Syrian rebels:; 2,980–3,235 fighters killed
	Civilian casualties (including 1,800–2,154 civilians killed during civil uprising):; 10,414–10,669 killed overall (government claim); 15,200–16,163 killed overall (opposition claims); 35,000 wounded overall; (see Deaths below for other estimates on killed); 240,000 displaced (including 180,000 refugees)

The early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war lasted from late July 2011 to April 2012, and was associated with the rise of armed oppositional militias across Syria and the beginning of armed revolution against the Syrian Ba'athist regime. Though armed insurrection incidents began as early as June 2011 when rebels killed 120–140 Syrian security personnel, the beginning of organized insurgency is typically marked by the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on 29 July 2011, when a group of defected officers declared the establishment of the first organized oppositional military force. Composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel, the rebel army aimed to remove Bashar al-Assad and his government from power.

This period of the war saw the initial civil uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.

The Arab League monitoring mission, initiated in December 2011, ended in failure by February 2012, as Syrian Ba'athist troops and oppositional militants continued to do battle across the country and the Syrian Ba'athist government prevented foreign observers from touring active battlefields, including besieged oppositional strongholds.

In early 2012, Kofi Annan acted as the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria. His peace plan provided for a ceasefire, but even as the negotiations for it were being conducted, the rebels and the Syrian army continued fighting even after the peace plan.^: 11 The United Nations-backed ceasefire was brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan and declared in mid-April 2012.