18 Introduction mobilization. Furthermore, because the Syrian revolution was still unfolding over the course of 2011 and 2012, this gave me an opportunity to see how the Arab Spring was impacting mobilization efforts in real time. But given the fact that the Arab Spring also occurred in other countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain in 2011, why compare diaspora movements from Syria, Libya, and Yemen? Examining the anti-regime activism of these groups in the United States and Britain made sense on other grounds beyond my newfound access to community events. Out of the six MENA countries that gave rise to revolutionary movements during the Arab Spring,10 all had been ruled by authoritarian regimes for decades prior to the Arab Spring; undoubtedly, diaspora members from all of these countries were moved by the revolutions.11 However, only Libya, Syria, and Yemen produced initial struggles to upend dictatorships that were sustained over the course of months or longer. For Libyans, this occurred from the uprising’s emergence in February to August 2011 when Gaddafi was overrun; the Syrian uprising began in February 2011 and continues at the time of this writing; for Yemenis, the revolution emerged in January 2011 and continued until Saleh agreed to step down that November. In contrast, Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain’s initial uprisings averaged approximately one month each in duration. This is not to say that the revolutions were identical in duration or character – far from it.12 As I elaborate in the chapters to come, variation in the uprisings had important impacts on diaspora activism. Nevertheless, the Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni rebellions took place in contexts that were highly repressive and resource-poor, and they required outside assistance, including international publicity, political leverage, and humanitarian aid, to survive. As a result, each revolution was prolonged enough to give diaspora members the 10 11 12 Tunisia and Egypt’s initial revolutionary uprisings against dictatorships took a matter of days, and Bahrain’s protest movement in Manama was crushed by Saudi intervention in March 2011. Jordan and Morocco’s uprisings did not escalate into revolutionary movements demanding the fall of their sovereigns, despite the emergence of protests; see Moss (2014) for an analysis on why Jordan’s movement remained reformist. Subsequent years have seen additional protests, counterrevolutions, and revolutionary uprisings in Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, and elsewhere (e.g., Holmes 2019). The comparison I make here is about the initial phase of revolutionary mobilization to oust longtime autocrats and change governmental leadership (Brownlee et al. 2015). For research on sustained and episodic diaspora activism for Egypt, see Kennedy (2019); on Bahraini exile mobilization, see Beaugrand and Geisser (2016). Libya’s uprising escalated quickly into a zero-sum nationwide revolutionary war intent on overthrowing the Gaddafi regime by force. Syria’s Arab Spring began as a disparate protest movement that evolved into a revolutionary war as regime brutality provoked a backlash; by 2014, violence from the regime, its allies, and extremists had produced the world’s worst refugee crisis since World War II (Chatty 2018). Yemen’s revolution involved primarily peaceful, longterm protest encampments in urban centers; despite attacks against protesters and battles between defected armed factions and regime forces in the summer, regime violence did not succeed in stoking a nationwide war in 2011. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press