The Free Syrian Army (FSA) is a big-tent coalition of decentralized Syrian opposition rebel groups in the Syrian civil war, founded on 29 July 2011 by Colonel Riad al-Asaad and six officers who defected from the Syrian Armed Forces. The officers announced that the immediate priority of the Free Syrian Army was to safeguard the lives of protestors and civilians from the deadly crackdown by Bashar al-Assad's security apparatus, with the ultimate goal of accomplishing the objectives of the Syrian revolution, namely, the end to the decades-long reign of the ruling al-Assad family. Initially a formal military organization at its founding, the FSA was a coalition of rebel groups backed by Turkey and the West, fighting Assad's regime in the early civil war phases. In late 2011, the FSA was the main Syrian military defectors group. Its original command structure dissipated by 2016, and the FSA identity was later used by several different Syrian opposition groups.