The Republican Guard (Al-Haras al-Jumhuri) is an elite Syrian military formation whose primary purpose has been the protection of the Assad regime rather than conventional battlefield effectiveness. Heavily Alawite in its officer corps and better paid and equipped than the regular Syrian Arab Army, the Republican Guard was positioned around Damascus and the presidential palace complex. Its institutional loyalty was to the Assad family rather than to any formal military hierarchy. Under Bashar al-Assad, the Fourth Armoured Division — commanded by his brother Maher al-Assad — absorbed much of the praetorian function that earlier formations had served. The existence of these parallel military formations served the same structural purpose as the competing intelligence agencies: regular army commanders knew that any move against the regime would face armed resistance from the Guard and Fourth Division before it could reach Assad. The regular army was constitutionally incapable of mounting a coup because the praetorian units would intercept it. During the civil war, the Republican Guard and Fourth Armoured Division were among the most consistently deployed formations, used in siege operations and urban clearing where the regime’s most reliable forces were required.