Representing 149 in 1984, a group of young professionals who organized themselves at the onset of the uprising to form the Libyan British Relations Council. Dr. Abdul Malek of Libya Watch in Manchester also met with various European governments to convince them to recognize the NTC, Libya’s government-in-waiting, as the legitimate representative of the home-country. Even after winning support, which I discuss at length in Chapter 7, A. R. of the Libyan British Relations Council recalled the strategic importance of wielding voice through lobbying over time: Before [the intervention], people had no idea what was going on. After, Parliament wanted to make sure that they were fighting a good fight, and we knew that NATO’s involvement was vital. So the main purpose was to keep them committed to the fight at the same level of operations and not to feel under political pressure to withdraw. The other purpose was that we wanted to be an alternative face of Libya. Because you had the diaspora here, educated people, speaking the language of the country they live in. The only thing that was known about Libya was created in Gaddafi’s image, and we wanted to show people that, no, Libyans are a well-educated people who can speak. Lobbying efforts were also initiated by exiled Syrians who were already public in their anti-regime sentiments prior to the Arab Spring, such as Marah Bukai and Dr. Radwan Ziadeh in the United States. After newcomers to activism began to organize and come out publicly for regime change for the first time, these efforts expanded and grew to be represented by such organizations as the Syrian American Council, the DC-based Syrian Emergency Task Force, and the group British Solidarity for Syria by the end of 2011. Dr. Ziadeh and Marah reported that their earliest meetings with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were productive. They presented several requests, according to Ziadeh. The first meeting we had was with Secretary Clinton at the State Department. This was in June 2011, before any of the opposition organizations had been established. At that time, actually, the meeting was very good. We requested from Secretary Clinton four things: for President Obama to ask Bashar al-Assad to step aside, which he did not do until August; to increase the sanctions on oil companies; then to work with the UN Security Council to [pass a] resolution condemning the violence in Syria; and to work on the sanctions against people in the Syrian government, ban them from traveling, stop giving them visas. Secretary Clinton, at that time, took things very seriously. My focus at that time was to get any kind of international support. Because we know what’s happened before in Syria in the ’80s when there was no reaction from the international community. My focus at the time was to get a special session on Syria with the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. We had many meetings at the State Department to convince them to request special meetings. That was in April 2011.5 After the regime escalated its violent response over the course of 2011, many activists also came to advocate for the implementation of a no-fly zone to stop the regime from bombing liberated and civilian areas. Activists argued that this was both necessary and obligatory under the principles of the Responsibility to 5 The UN Human Rights Council held a special session on the “Situation of Human Rights in the Syrian Arab Republic” on April 29, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press