Our seven maps below illustrate how Syria became a country and the forces that have made it so unstable.

This story appears in the March 2014 issue of National Geographic ... of 2013, Syria’s bloody and complex civil war had displaced some nine million men, women, and children (view map).

As rebels in Syria make new advances against government ... that the Middle East remains divided on the civil war, with local geography playing a significant role in how states reacted.

Syria’s civil war obliterated their neighborhoods ... This story appears in the March 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. A wedding at Riga Palace in Aleppo is the first celebration ...

(CNN) — For more than a decade, Syria’s multi-front civil war had raged, leaving the country divided and scarred. And for most of that time, the fighting showed little sign of stopping.