The following excerpt was taken from the Washington Post.  To view the original, click here.

A Hunted Syrian Activist Begins his Work Anew in Washington

By Tara Bahrampour, Published: August 28

Last Thursday, Rami Nakhla met some friends after work at a Starbucks on Dupont Circle. They sat outside, and the sun glinted off a glass building and lighted their faces.

For months, Nakhla and his friends, Syrian dissidents who in the past year fled the regime of Bashar al-Assad, had lived shrouded in darkness. Now, meeting openly at a cafe in Washington evoked mixed emotions: bemusement, relief and a twinge of survivor’s guilt for being safe when so many are still in danger.

“If you do anything for yourself, you feel guilty. . . . You have so many more things to do,” said Nakhla, 29, a political asylee who is working as a program specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Until last year, he had been a political science student living in an Alawite section of Damascus.

For many asylees who come to the United States, their political engagement dries up as they lose their connections with home and struggle to earn a living. But Washington, with its think tanks and politically engaged expat communities, offers more opportunities for involvement for people like Nakhla, who is still deeply entrenched in the war in Syria.

For eight months, through the auspices of the institute, Nakhla has been putting together “The Day After,” a nongovernmental organization that connects Syrian dissidents worldwide to develop a blueprint for what should happen once al-Assad is ousted. The NGO is funded mostly by the State Department, with additional funding from some European governments and NGOs.

Nakhla and others on the board of the 50-member organization unveiled the 130-page plan Tuesday at a news conference in Berlin, where the group’s meetings have been held (many of its members live in the Middle East or Europe). The plan offers suggestions on how to address issues often inherent in a regime’s collapse, such as ....to view the rest, click here.

Rami Nakhla is on CyberDissidents.org's Blogger Board. CyberDissidents.org is a division of Advancing Human Rights.