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The Free Syrian Army (Arabic: الجيش السوري الحر, al-Jaysh as-Sūrī al-Ḥurr, FSA) is a group of defected Syrian Armed Forces officers and soldiers,[17][18] founded during the Syrian Civil War on 29 July 2011[19] by five[18] or seven defected Syrian officers.[19][20] The group defined "all [Syrian] security forces attacking civilians" as their enemies,[19][20] and said its goal was "to bring down the system"[19] or "to bring this regime down".[18] From the end of 2014 onward, the very existence of the group as an operational entity in Syria has been questioned by some experts and foreign government officials.