Militant

A militant is a person engaged in fighting, warfare or combat outside the aegis of a recognized state (e.g. a revolutionary or insurgent, not a member of a regular army).

Militant may also refer to:

See also

Position

Position refers to the spatial location (rather than orientation) of an entity. The term may also refer to:

Science and mathematics

Humanities, law and economics

Games and recreation

Human activity

Syrian Army

The Syrian Army, officially the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) (Arabic: الجيش العربي السوري‎ al-Jaysh al-’Arabī as-Sūrī), is the land force branch of the Syrian Armed Forces. It is the dominant military service of the four uniformed services, controlling the most senior posts in the armed forces, and has the greatest manpower, approximately 80 percent of the combined services. The Syrian Army originated in local military forces formed by the French after World War I, after France obtained a mandate over the region. It officially came into being in 1945, before Syria obtained full independence the following year.

Since 1946, it has played a major role in Syria's governance, mounting five military coups (two in 1949, including the March 1949 Syrian coup d'état and the August 1949 coup by Colonel Sami al-Hinnawi, 1954, 1963, 1966, and in 1970. It has fought four wars with Israel (1948, the Six Day War in 1967, 1973, and 1982 in Lebanon) and one with Jordan (Black September in Jordan, 1970). An armored division was also deployed to Saudi Arabia in 1990–91 during the Persian Gulf War, but saw little action. From 1976 to 2005 it was the major pillar of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Internally, it played a major part in suppressing the 1979–82 Islamist uprising in Syria, and since early 2011 has been heavily engaged in fighting the Syrian Civil War, the most violent and prolonged war the Syrian Army has taken part in since its establishment in the 1940s.

Laskar Jihad

Laskar Jihad (Indonesian: Warriors of Jihad ), was an Islamist and anti-Christian Indonesian militia, which was founded and led by Jafar Umar Thalib. At present, the militia is believed to have disbanded.

History

Laskar Jihad was founded in 2000 by Thalib, an Indonesian who had been trained in Pakistani madrasahs and who had fought together with the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. The primary cause for the creation of Laskar Jihad was the outbreak of sectarian violence in the Indonesian provinces of Maluku and North Maluku where clashes between Muslims and Christians erupted in 1999. Soon after its creation, Laskar Jihad opened recruitment centers in various parts of Indonesia. Muslims joining the militia came from Java, Sumatra, South Sulawesi and Kalimantan. Many of them were unemployed, while some were university students.

Laskar Jihad arrived in Ambon in May 2000 and then in other of the Maluku Islands (also known as the Moluccas) where the Islamist militia joined Maluku Muslims in the fighting with Christian groups, thereby exacerbating the ongoing violence. The intervention of Laskar Jihad soon gave Muslims the upper hand in the conflict, with the Islamists burning down churches and houses of the indigenous Melanesian communities in Ambon and other Moluccan islands. In the following two years, an estimated 9,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands had to flee their towns.Forced conversions and forced circumcisions of Christians took place in Maluku, while, according to witness accounts, present duty military and police personnel did not interfere. A Laskar Jihad member later recalled being welcomed by Indonesian soldiers who supplied the Islamist militia with standard military equipment.

Syria

Coordinates: 35°N 38°E / 35°N 38°E / 35; 38

Syria (ⁱ/ˈsɪ.rɪə/; Arabic: سوريا‎ or سورية, Sūriyā or Sūrīyah), officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in Western Asia. De jure Syrian territory borders Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest, but the government's control now extends to approximately 30–40% of the de jure state area and less than 60% of the population.

A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including Syrian Arabs, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Circassians,Mandeans and Turks. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, and Yazidis. Sunni Arabs make up the largest population group in Syria.

In English, the name "Syria" was formerly synonymous with the Levant (known in Arabic as al-Sham), while the modern state encompasses the sites of several ancient kingdoms and empires, including the Eblan civilization of the 3rd millennium BC. Its capital Damascus is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. In the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt.