FSA meaning in Country Specific ?

The Free Syrian Army (FSA) (Arabic: الْجَيْش السُّوْرِي الْحُرّ‎, romanized: al-Jayš as-Sūrī al-Ḥurr) is a loose faction in the Syrian Civil War founded on 29 July 2011 by officers of the Syrian Armed Forces whose goal is to bring down the government of Bashar al-Assad. A formal organization at its founding, its structure gradually dissipated by late 2012, and the FSA identity has since been used by various opposition groups.

In late 2011, it was considered the main Syrian military defectors group. It had success against vastly better armed government forces. From July 2012 onward, ill-discipline, infighting and lack of funding weakened the FSA, while Islamist groups became dominant within the armed opposition.

The Free Syrian Army aims to be "the military wing of the Syrian people's opposition to the regime", and it aims to bring down the government by armed operations, encouraging army defections and by carrying out armed action. As the Syrian Army is highly organized and well-armed, the Free Syrian Army adopted guerrilla-style tactics in the countryside and cities. The FSA's military strategy is focused on a dispersed countrywide guerrilla campaign with a tactical focus on armed action in the capital of Damascus. The campaign was not meant to hold territory, but rather, to spread government forces and their Logistics chains thin in battles for urban centers, to cause attrition in the security forces, to degrade morale and to destabilize Damascus, the center of government.

After the Turkish military intervention in Syria in 2016, and as other countries began to scale back their involvement, the FSA became more dependent on Turkish help. For the FSA, Turkey was a sanctuary and a source of supplies. From late August 2016, the Turkish government assembled a new coalition of Syrian rebel groups, including many that were in the FSA. The core of this new coalition was the Hawar Kilis Operations Room. Often referred to as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), this force would adopt the name Syrian National Army in 2017.