2000
June 2000 - President Hafez al-Assad dies of heart failure after 30 years as president, ushering in a new political age. The Regional Command of the ruling Ba’ath party nominates al-Assad’s son, Bashar, for president. The national constitution is amended to lower the age requirement for president to allow Bashar to stand.
July 2000 - Bashar al-Assad is elected president in a national referendum, winning 97 percent of the vote. In an inaugural address, he pledges to reform the state-run economy and reject western-style democracy.
September 2000 - Syrian intellectuals issue the "Statement of 99," which calls for democratic reform.
November 2000 – President al-Assad pardons 600 political prisoners, from a political prisoner count then estimated at 1500.
2001
January 2001 - A thousand intellectuals sign a petition demanding democratic reforms. The statement triggers a government crackdown, bringing an end to the brief thaw in political life, known as the "Damascus Spring," that came in the wake of the presidential succession.
May 2001 - The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, which led an armed uprising against the regime in the early 1980s, issues a statement calling for a modern, democratic state, and rejects political violence.
June 2001 - Syrian troops in Lebanon begin their first major redeployment, with some 6,000 pulling out of the Lebanese capital, Beirut. An estimated 20,000 are left in the country.
August-September 2001 - A number of civil society activists, including some members of parliament, are arrested and imprisoned.
September 2001 - President al-Assad calls for international help to eradicate terrorism following attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon in the US, which kill almost 3,000 people. Al Queda claims responsibility for the attacks.
November 2001 - A further 122, mainly Islamist, political prisoners are granted an amnesty.
2002
March 2002 - President al-Assad travels to Lebanon to meet Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, the first visit by a Syrian head of state to that country since 1975.
April 2002 - A second major withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon takes place. President al-Assad rejects a proposal by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, during an unscheduled trip to Damascus, of a new Arab-Israeli summit.
May 2002 - The US adds Syria to its list of "Axis-of-Evil" states, which Washington claims are deliberately seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.
2003
February 2003 - A third major withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon leaves an estimated 16,000 troops stationed in that country.
March 2003 - A US-led coalition invades Iraq with the aim of toppling Ba’athist President Saddam Hussein. Within days, the oil pipeline between Kirkuk in northern Iraq and the Syrian port of Banyas is destroyed by US forces, cutting off an estimated 150-200,000 barrels a day of oil into Syria.
President al-Assad criticises the invasion, saying it serves Israel’s interests. He goes on to predict that the US will be unable to pacify Iraq.
April 2003 - Washington accuses Damascus of aiding the transit of foreign fighters into Iraq and demands Syrian cooperation.
May 2003 - In Damascus, US Secretary of State Colin Powell says a US war with Syria is "not on the table," confirming that al-Assad had promised to close the offices of Palestinian militant groups Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
July 2003 - The UNDP annual Human Rights Development Report on global economic and social development ranks Syria 110th place –down from 97th in 2001 – out of 175 countries.
September 2003 - The US-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq announces that 123 of 248 "foreign fighters" captured in the country are Syrian.
October 2003 - Israel attacks an alleged Islamic Jihad camp near Damascus in a missile attack, its first strike inside Syria since the 1973 war. Syria seeks a UN resolution condemning the attack, to no avail.
November 2003 - The Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act is passed overwhelmingly on Capitol Hill. The act threatens Damascus with sanctions if it continues its alleged support of terrorist groups; maintains its military presence in Lebanon; pursues weapons-of-mass-destruction programmes; or engages in actions aimed at undermining US efforts to stabilise and rebuild Iraq.
Syria ranks 155th out of 166 countries in the second annual index on media freedom, issued by Reporters without Borders, down from 126th previously.
December 2003 - The EU and Syria agree on a free trade agreement worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Syrian exporters, although the deal has yet to be ratified by EU member states. US President George Bush signs the Syrian Accountability Act into law.
2004
February 2004 - A further 120 Islamist and Iraqi Ba’athist political prisoners are released. President al-Assad abolishes the Economic Security Courts, in place since 1977, which try defendants under emergency laws that deprive them of their constitutional rights.
March 2004 - Nearly 100 protesters demanding democratic reform are arrested outside parliament in Damascus but released soon after. In the north-eastern city of Qamishli, riots between rival Kurdish and Arab football fans leave 25 people dead after security services intervene. Hundreds of Kurds are imprisoned.
May 2004 - Bush implements selected provisions of the Syrian Accountability Act, banning all exports to Syria except food and medicine and freezing the US-based assets of Syrians associated with terrorist organisations; the development of WMD; the occupation of Lebanon; or efforts to undermine stability in Iraq.
June 2004 - Bush and French President Jacques Chirac meet in Paris to discuss a possible UN resolution on Syria.
August 2004 - Rafik Hariri, five-time Lebanese prime minister, meets President al-Assad in Damascus and is told to drop his opposition to Syria’s role in Lebanese politics. The Lebanese parliament subsequently amends the constitution to grant Pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud a three-year extension of his term.
September 2004 - The UN Security Council, led by the US and France, passes Resolution 1559, calling for a "free and fair election process" in Lebanon, the disarmament of all Lebanese militias and the withdrawal of "all remaining foreign forces." Syria subsequently withdraws some 3,000 of its soldiers from Lebanon, the fifth major redeployment since 2000.
October 2004 - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan singles out the Syrian military as "the only significant foreign forces deployed in Lebanon," and cites Damascus’s admission of "a substantial presence of non-uniformed military intelligence officials" in Lebanon.
On the same day, Druze MP Marwan Hamadi, who had resigned his cabinet post to protest Lebanese President Lahoud's three-year term extension, is seriously injured by a car bomb. The bombing represents the first reported assassination attempt on a senior Lebanese official since 1989.
President al-Assad calls resolution 1559 a "flagrant interference in the affairs of Lebanon" and denies "Syrian hegemony" in Lebanon.
2005
January 2005 - Waleed Mualem, former ambassador to Washington, is sworn in as Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister with a mandate to institutionalise Syria’s role in Lebanon, taking some control from Rustom Ghazali, Syria’s then head of security in that country.
February 2005 - Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is killed, along with 22 others, by a massive explosion in Beirut. On the same day, Asef Shawkat takes over as head of Syrian Military Intelligence upon the retirement of Hassan al-Khalil. Hariri's funeral, attended by hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, turns into an outpouring of anger against Syria, receiving massive coverage in the western media. Pro-Syrian Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami resigns amid the anti-Syrian furore.
March 2005 - President al-Assad tells parliament that Syrian troops will begin a complete withdrawal from Lebanon. An estimated 800,000 people, mostly Lebanese Shi’ites, flood central Beirut in a huge pro-Syrian rally organised by Shi’ite militia Hezbollah. In Syria, tens of thousands rally in support of their president’s stance.
Later, more than a million anti-Syrian protestors stage the largest demonstration in Lebanon's modern history, as Syrian intelligence agents vacate their Beirut headquarters.
Shortly afterwards, a series of bombs go off in the Christian suburbs of Beirut, killing three and wounding dozens.
An initial UN fact-finding mission concludes that "the Government of Syria bears primary responsibility for the political tension that preceded the [Hariri] assassination."
April 2005 - The UN Security Council issues resolution 1595, which provides for an independent commission based in Lebanon to assist the Lebanese criminal investigation into the Hariri killing. The last Syrian soldiers leave Lebanon.
May 2005 - Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian and staunch rival of Syria, returns to Beirut after 14 years of exile. The first of a series of parliamentary elections hand all 19 seats in Beirut to supporters of Sa’ad Hariri, son of the slain prime minister. Hariri’s block goes on to win 72 out of 128 seats in parliament.
June 2005 - Samir Qaseer, a prominent anti-Syrian journalist for independent daily An-Nahar, is killed in a car bombing in Beirut. George Hawi, the Christian and anti-Syrian former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, is also killed in a Beirut car bomb. Both killings are popularly blamed on Damascus, which staunchly denies responsibility.
August 2005 - President al-Assad says Syria has "nothing to do" with the Hariri assassination, reiterating his certainty that the Syrian security services were not involved. At the request of a UN investigation headed by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, Lebanese authorities detain four pro-Syrian security chiefs who served in Lebanon at the time of the killing.
September 2005 - Mehlis meets with Syrian officials responsible for security in Lebanon. Broadcaster Mae Shadiak, who worked for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation and who presented programmes critical of Syria, is maimed by a car bomb in Beirut.
October 2005 - The UN Security Council adopts resolution 1636, threatening Syria with "further action" after noting the conclusion of an initial report by the Mehlis investigation that that the decision to kill Hariri "could not have been taken without the approval of top-ranked Syrian security officials."
The resolution demands that Damascus arrest and make available for questioning suspects in the case. Assef Shawkat, President al-Assad’s brother-in-law and Head of Syrian Military Intelligence, and Mahar al-Assad, the president’s brother and head of the powerful Republican Guards, are named in a leaked version of the report as having planned the assassination.
Shortly afterward, Ghazi Kanaan, Syria’s interior minister and head of intelligence in Lebanon for two decades, is found dead in his office. A 24-hour official inquiry by the Attorney General rules the death a suicide.
November 2005 - In a rare, nationally broadcast speech, President al-Assad strikes a defiant tone: "Resistance has a price and chaos has a price, but the price of resistance is much less than the price of chaos…If they believe they can blackmail Syria, we will tell them they have the wrong address," he says.
Some 190 political prisoners, the majority of whom are members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, are released after a presidential pardon which the state news agency SANA says is meant to "fortify national unity."
December 2005 - Syria is widely blamed for the killing of Gibran Tueni, the publisher of An-Nahar, a prominent MP and vocal critic of Syria’s role in Lebanon, who dies after his car is blown off a mountain pass by a roadside bomb east of Beirut.
A day later, a second report from UN investigators finds that Syria has burned intelligence documents relating to Lebanon and attempted to hinder the UN inquiry. It also finds further evidence of Syrian involvement in the Hariri assassination.
Five of the six Syrian security officials requested to be interviewed as part of the inquiry are made available by Damascus.
Former Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam goes into exile in Paris, saying that President al-Assad and other top officials had threatened Hariri before his death. Damascus denies the claims, condemning Khaddam as a traitor to Syria.