The San Remo conference assigns Syria to French mandate; French forces defeat the short-lived Arab Kingdom of Syria at Maysalun in July 1920 and enter Damascus. Mandate rule divides the territory — separate Alawite and Druze statelets, Lebanon detached — and the border with the new Turkish republic is drawn through Kurdish-populated areas.
Why it mattersThe Mandate fixed the borders, the minority geographies and the memories of separate status that the civil war would reopen: the Alawite coast, the Druze south and the divided Kurdish north all date their modern political shape to this decade.