The Syrian Arab Republic is located in the Fertile Crescent, the agricultural heartland of the ancient Near East. It is bordered on the west by Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea, on the north by Turkey, on the east by Iraq, and on the south by Israel and Jordan. It occupies 185,180 square kilometers

(MAP BY MARYLAND CARTOGRAPHICS/THE GALE GROUP)

(71,480 square miles)—including 1,295 square kilometers (500 square miles) of Israeli-occupied territory—and consists largely of semiarid desert plateau with a narrow coastal plain and small mountains in the west. With a desert climate Syria is expected to exhaust its ground-water reserves by around 2010, leaving it totally dependent on river water.

The population of Syria in 2003 was estimated to be a little more than 18 million people. Arabs constitute 90 percent of the population, with Alawite, Druze, and small minority groups making up the remaining 10 percent. Approximately 75 percent of the population is Sunni...