54 Exit from Authoritarianism membership-based associations dedicated to ousting Gaddafi. In summary, the Libya anti-regime movement abroad, while noteworthy and important, was exceedingly small, lacked cohesion, and rarely involved non-exiles before the 2011 revolution. 2.3 libyan socializing and empowerment initiatives Respondents who grew up in exile reported that their parents never intended to remain apart from Libya for long. Khaled, a second-generation Libyan American and the son of an NFSL activist who had grown up in Lexington, Kentucky, recalled, “We always thought that next year, next year, we’re going to go home. We used to say, lan nahruhu: ‘when we will return.’” But as repeated attempts to overthrow Gaddafi failed, interviewees like Khaled reported that their parents began to accept the fact that their exile might be permanent. Recognizing that youth like Khaled risked becoming estranged from their Libyan identity and culture, activist Dr. Gaddor Saidi founded the Libyan Association of Southern California in 1986 in Orange County as a way to organize regular community gatherings for families across the region. Gaddor reported that the association was apolitical even though many of those who founded it were in exile and involved in some kind of opposition activity, as he had been himself. He recalled, Myself and others who organized it, we always made sure that it’s open, that we don’t get into the politics so that we at least give the young people some kind of platform to have some connection to their country. Hoping that one day they will go back. [But] we were thinking that it’s not going to happen in our lifetime, especially when Gaddafi’s children started taking hold of the country. From Manchester, Zakia, who was forced to escape Libya with her husband and seek refuge in Britain in 1998, formed the Libya Women’s Association in 2003. Her group, which intentionally avoided any involvement with homecountry politics, was founded to promote the social development of “Libyan women, and make them more active in the UK – to study, go out, and meet people. We did many activities for kids to push them to get all the positive things in the UK.” In the United States, members of the diaspora established a camp for youth called Amal, which means “hope” in Arabic. Adam of Virginia, a former participant in Amal and a second-generation exile, recalled fondly that because Libyans were scattered across the United States, the camp provided “an opportunity for everybody to come together, for families to meet up again. This is like our Libyan family. Of course, our immediate cousins are overseas in Libya. [But] these [people] are our surrogate cousins, mothers, fathers.” Initiatives like Amal were critical in fostering strong social and cultural ties for second-generation exiles who never knew, or who barely remembered, their homeland. As Abdullah, who grew up in the NFSL-Lexington community with Khaled, recalled, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272148 Published online by Cambridge University Press