194 Converting Resources to the Cause lobbying or political advocacy as of 2014. While official statistics on their community wealth is lacking, this suggests that the smaller community in Britain, which is also made up of more recent immigrants, lacks the wealth of their counterparts in the United States. Though respondents reported some ad hoc volunteer-based lobbying efforts, including by a handful of volunteers comprising the Syrian Parliamentary Affairs Group and Syrian Christians for Democracy, most interviewees lamented the weakness of the British Syrian community’s lobbying efforts. The Parliamentary Affairs Group, for example, was only formed after the failure of the British government to launch strikes in retaliation to the regime’s chemical weapons attacks of August 2013. This group was also comprised largely of Syrian doctors who volunteered on a part-time basis. Other informal organizations that had previously engaged in advocacy, such as the British Solidarity for Syria, were inactive by 2014. Nebal, a former coordinator of this group, explained, “To be honest, we’ve got no resources.” Mazen E. of London agreed, describing in a separate interview, “We have some small groups, lobbying groups or parliamentary groups. They’re not professional by any means. These things need a lot of financial support and professional support. Unfortunately, we haven’t got it.” Syrian American professional groups, on the other hand, continued to represent and broker with a range of officials across governmental institutions and think tanks. While these groups were unable to change the Obama administration’s policy on Syria outright, as the next chapter explains, they continued to work with allies in the US government to provide information to and consult with policymakers. Some, like Mouaz, continue their work years later, including at the time of this writing. Another benefit of movement formalization was that the specialization of the pro-revolution diaspora’s work enabled them to address needs in a way that used limited resources efficiently. M. of the nonprofit organization Help for Syria in London recalled, To start with, we were not professional. Everybody – one a doctor, one a teacher, one a businessman – all wanted to help, and in the beginning, everybody was doing everything. We were going out demonstrating in front of the embassy, we were trying to go to the parliament in here, we were communicating with the newspapers, with the news, with the TV, networking, doing humanitarian work. Then we started realizing you have to specialize in something. It’s wrong to do everything. Leave the doctors to do the medical field. Leave the psychiatrists to do [mental health] support. Even if you’re going to do humanitarian, specialize either in nutrition or homes or clothes or children or women. That’s why I withdrew from where I used to work in Turkey and Lebanon and Jordan. I am from the city of Suwayda. It’s inside Syria and is very difficult to get to, it’s in a city still under government control. There are a lot of displaced families in there, really in need. They cannot go to the Red Cross under their names because of their relations, their husbands and kids who are fighting. So that’s where I concentrate my work, in an area where I can be more effective. Lina of the Karam Foundation, based in Chicago, also realized after a time that doing both political and humanitarian work was unsustainable. Referring to https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press