This paper explores the politics of Syrian archive-making in exile, with a focus on Berlin and London. It is based on analyses of digital archives, interview data, and ethnographic work, and questions who such archivists and community organizers are in their respective contexts. The paper pays particular attention to the formation of Syrian exilic networks along axes of gender, class, ethnic identity, amongst other markers of distinction. Indeed, Syrian ‘communities’ in the diaspora are frequently treated as a monolith, which obscures the specificities that shape the exilic contexts they inhabit and the memory and documentation work they engage in. Beyond questioning who constitutes the ‘community’, the paper reflects on the socio-political formation of Syrian cultures of counter-hegemony, specifically through archival practices. The latter is characterized by knowledge production that responds to memoricide and epistemic violence. In effect, the Syrian experience demonstrates how aspects of Syrian collective memory have been violently buried beneath grand narratives and statist endeavors that attempt to quash the afterlives of the Syrian uprising and revolutionary struggle. Until today, those in exile continue to face intimidation and coercion, forced repatriation to Syria under highly unsafe conditions, where torture and extrajudicial killings are common place. Violence cannot be ‘escaped’ when the fate of forcibly ‘disappeared’ and detained individuals, by the Syrian regime and armed groups, looms over their displaced family members in Europe and elsewhere. In this context of regime violence and coercion, namely widespread disinformation campaigns that whitewash state crimes, this research traces the development of counter-archival work, whereby exilic networks reclaim power over the articulation of their own historical experiences of state-sponsored, spectacular violence, as well as the gaze through which a people’s struggle is read and remembered. The paper looks at examples of archival initiatives that have flourished in Berlin and London, questioning the political conditions their architects and contributors respond to, as well as the curatorial and epistemological tensions that they navigate to meaningfully sustain their work. It interrogates how Syrian archive makers engage with customary institutional support geared toward them, which often embody Western, hegemonic discourses and liberal logics that they may be critical of. Other impositions may include funding conditionalities that ideologically or methodologically attempt to steer archival work in certain directions. This contribution reflects on ways in which they possibly challenge hegemonic repertoires for dealing with historical hauntings and ways they intervene through epistemological alternatives that better cater to their needs.