60 Exit from Authoritarianism During the false promise of Bashar’s reforms in the early 2000s, secondgeneration exiles came of age in the West and joined their elders to advocate for democracy at home. Malik had been in exile since his birth in Jordan because of his father’s oppositional activities. Growing up in London, he and others in the global anti-regime diaspora communicated through “Paltalk,” a precursor to Skype, to discuss political change back home. You had chatrooms where people get the mic and they talk. You had a Syrian group there, which was the opposition; the room was called Syria Justice and Freedom. I was there every night – I was basically hooked on this – from 8 p.m. to 11 or so. That was the peak. People would join to talk about issues related to Syria, some of whom lived in the US, some in the Gulf, some in Jordan. It was all anonymous, so no one quite knew who you were. This is how I got to know politics. By 2006, Malik, his brother Anas, and their friends sought to forge an alternative to what he described as the two “classic” options in the exiled opposition: the Muslim Brotherhood and the communists. He went on to co-found a network of second-generation British Syrian exiles called the Syrian Exiles League. This group, which they later dubbed the Syrian Justice and Development Party, lobbied on behalf of exiled and stateless Syrians in the international community and founded a satellite channel called Barada TV. From London, Malik and his colleagues broadcast pre-recorded anti-regime programs with the intention of reaching audiences in Syria. Barada TV also provided fellow exiles with a unique platform to discuss the need for regime change in Syria and its atrocities against minorities, including against a Kurdish uprising in Al-Qamishli in 2004. In 2005, the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri stoked an uprising that led to the withdrawal of Syria’s occupation of Lebanon. Reformers seized upon this opportunity to publish the Damascus Declaration in 2005, which called for constitutional reforms, the recognition of Kurdish rights, and gradual political liberalization. (Muslim Brothers chose instead to form a National Salvation Front with the former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam when he defected in 2006; see Conduit 2019.) The surge in hope for change and the newfound audacity of civil society leaders in Syria inspired the formation of new groups abroad as well. This included the Syrian American Council (SAC) in 2005, established by several first-generation immigrants in Burr Ridge, Illinois. The purpose of SAC was to support the burgeoning civil society movement in Syria and promote a general dialogue about civil liberties, but without explicitly mentioning or criticizing the regime by name. Its founding members also attempted to set up chapters in other US cities and invited well-known activists from Syria to attend their inaugural event in Chicago. Movements-in-exile, including the Muslim Brotherhood and the Syrian Justice and Development Party, joined activists in Syria to sign the Damascus Declaration in 2005. However, the proponents of the Damascus Declaration https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press