162 Voice for Rebellion and Relief As more and more Syrians were forced to flee their homes, activists also fundraised for aid. A member of Syria Relief in Manchester recalled, Initially it was informal. We recognized there were a large number of people who tried to flee from Syria into Turkey and were stuck at the borders. They were sleeping on the ground and when it rained, they had to sleep in the trees. It was just awful to hear about that. We didn’t even see it at that time because there wasn’t footage or reports, but we heard about it from contacts and friends and families and what have you. So at that time we decided amongst us to raise as much as we could. It was all done on trust. We’d ring people and say we need money for this purpose. We can’t really provide a receipt or confirmation where the money went for but if you trust me, please do send the money. [Some] guys who went over bought tents and blankets and clothing, and got it across the border to these people that were displaced. Nebal in London echoed that remitting was often learned on the fly. “I was a PhD researcher,” he said. “I had no idea about how to do charity work. It wasn’t organized work in the beginning. We were just sending the money straight away to the activists inside Syria.” As the number of refugees swelled into the millions and they grew increasingly fragmented, apolitical humanitarian aid became the major focus of the diaspora. Though the exact figure has been impossible to track, the US and British diasporas have donated anywhere from tens of millions of dollars to over half a billion US dollars to the humanitarian effort alone since 2011 (Alloush 2018; Svoboda and Pantuliano 2015). Activists also founded professional organizations during the revolutions to assist with humanitarian aid delivery and reconstruction. Syrian American engineer Khaled, for example, founded the Syrian American Engineers Association to work on near- and long-term rebuilding projects. Khaled said that by searching for like-minded organizations on the Internet in Arabic, he located engineering groups dedicated to rebuilding and supporting liberated areas around Damascus and Daraʻa. To begin helping them, he said, “You contact them, you send them your name. Usually they are skeptical, but once you have their trust, then you’ll start working with them.” In so doing, Khaled assisted by “planning out what areas they need help in so you can alleviate those needs and help them work through those issues.” As a result, Khaled transferred his expertise to help with rebuilding infrastructure, including the installation of water purification systems and the building of flour mills in areas facing aerial bombardment and widespread hunger. Others worked to advise the Free Syrian Army and various military and political leaders at the forefront of the anti-regime insurgency. Dr. Nana of the US-based Syrian Support Group worked in an advisory capacity to help bolster the practices and legitimacy of the armed resistance. When the Free Syrian Army was formed, which was defected soldiers who refused to fire on civilians basically, me and a bunch of guys thought that the Free Syrian Army is made of people who are not really organized. They don’t have a long-term plan, they don’t have experience in organizing or leadership or how to run a country. We helped them https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press