80 Silenced and Split The limits imposed on diaspora members’ speech reinforced the need to keep community events apolitical. Rafif, a Syrian American living in the Washington, DC, area, affirmed that the presence of informant networks in the community rendered gatherings into “shallow social events.” Gaddor, co-founder of the Libyan Association of Southern California, remarked that rumors about who was informing for the regime made others “uncomfortable. Some people actually used to come to the Association and then decided not to because of these individuals.” Ayman, a doctor who had settled in Manchester prior to the revolution, also affirmed that [Pro-regime Syrians] would take part in our community affairs and gala dinners, but we would never have the confidence or relaxation to speak in front of them openly about anything to do with the regime. For fear for ourselves, because we were going regularly back home, or for our family back home. Furthermore, unlike the Gaddafi regime, the Assad government sponsored Syrian organizations and social clubs that were understood as part of the regime’s infrastructure of control. Sarab, an activist based in New York, attested that “most of the Syrian-associated organizations or entities had some sort of close connection with the embassy.” Even purportedly apolitical humanitarian associations, such as the Syrian American and Syrian British medical societies, were not perceived by respondents as neutral or independent. Hasan, a second-generation exile in London, attested that these organizations “were based around what the regime wanted. You couldn’t have an independent community of the regime.” Kenan, a Syrian American activist, likewise reported that no organization “could operate independently of the Syrian government,” and as a result, “we had no civil society.” Transnational repression continued to hinder mobilization during the socalled Damascus Spring in the early 2000s. Although the Syrian American Council (SAC) was founded in 2005 to support Syrian civil society and was not an anti-regime group by any means, Hussam recalled that recruitment into the organization was extremely difficult due to the threats posed by transnational repression. He explained, In 2005, I was approached by a few Syrian Americans who I knew, mentioning to me that there’s a new organization that was started called Syrian American Council. I can tell you it [was] a secretive process – not something they announced in the media or on Facebook, because there’s so much fear that no one wanted to be associated with that publicly. [Only] through trusted sources, word of mouth, will they tell you about this meeting. On the day when [the first SAC meeting was held] somewhere in Orange County, that day I was traveling, but I told them you have my support. And I tried contacting a few people to encourage them to be part of it. Not a single person that I know who I contacted agreed to. The gathering was so small, maybe ten to twenty. And it didn’t go anywhere, because everyone was afraid to even be part of something. But that’s the irony of things. It was almost impossible to get a group of people to form a chapter in 2005 and ’06 and ’07 and ’08. Every time they talked to people, people didn’t https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press