156 Voice for Rebellion and Relief to “speak for themselves,” Abdullah of Enough Gaddafi! affirmed. Farah from London similarly emphasized that while diaspora voices were important, they were not the most important voices. “I did not want to be the voice of the revolution in Libya,” she exclaimed. “That was really important to me.” To that end, brokerage enabled revolutionaries and relief workers on the ground to speak to the outside world directly. Ayat additionally attested that an important part of brokerage included vetting her contacts to cultivate trust with journalists and prevent the spread of misinformation. “People I was talking to [in Libya] just kind of assumed that I was a journalist,” she mused. “And I said, no, I’m the middleman here, I just basically have to vet you.” Amna from Manchester reflected that some of her relatives in Libya “were surprised at how much we actually knew. I don’t think they realized that a lot of the information that was in the media was actually [from] the Libyans who were abroad, getting the information from Libya, and sending it across.” The preexistence and expansion of activists’ transnational network ties, as I detail further in Chapter 6, proved vital for brokering work. Syrians reported that connecting insiders with outsiders was important for overcoming a deficit in outside awareness about how bad the situation had become in besieged areas. Writer-activist and Karam Foundation founder Lina Sergie reported that in the early days of the uprising, We really were in the mindset that “the media doesn’t know what’s going on, nobody knows the truth. If only they knew more, then there would be a change.” We felt it was our duty to tell people what was going on, circulate the videos, and connect the media to different people like doctors and activists and fighters on the ground. I got connected with people in Homs, during the Baba Amr siege [in February 2012]. That was the moment when journalists were looking for people on the ground constantly; I would connect journalists and the media to the activists all the time. Haytham in Manchester likewise attested that this work was vital in empowering Syrians to speak for themselves whenever possible. “When the media called me,” he explained, “I said, okay, you want somebody from Homs? I will bring somebody from Homs. It’s not me who gives the information [about Homs]. It’s about linking.” Maher Nana, a Miami-based doctor and co-founder of the Syrian Support Group, further reported that brokerage was predicated on facilitating trust and understanding between insider and outsider political forces. We were actually bringing and introducing people, officers from the Free Syrian Army, to the US government and helped with vetting them. I mean, the most important thing that we did really was making the connection. So our role mainly was two things. Number one, to present the US side to the Free Syrian Army and let them know the United States stands for freedom, liberty, democracy, equality. We were raised [in Syria] on conspiracy theories – on the belief that the United States and Israel are evil, the sources of all the problems in the world. So when the Free Syrian Army was formed, we really wanted to let those guys know that this is not true. They were hopeful that the United States was going to provide support. We wanted to assure them that we live here, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press