WASHINGTON - It took a sarin gas cloud and 1,400 deaths in the suburbs of Damascus to put Syria at the top of the American agenda.

After two years of civil war and more than 100,000 casualties there, two Syrian-American activists with Arkansas ties thought an unmistakable line had been crossed and that their adopted country would finally intervene in their homeland’s violence.

But Congress balked, President Barack Obama backed down, and now military options have been replaced with diplomatic overtures.

So Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political science professor and Syrian opposition leader, has shifted his focus for now from United States congressmen to United Nations ambassadors.

“The last week in September is the time for the General Assembly of the United Nations, so I’ll be there for the whole duration,” Ghadbian told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after a Washington news conference earlier this month.

Ghadbian, 51, serves as U.S. representative for the main rebel group, the National Coalition of Syria Revolution and Opposition Forces, defending the rebels’ cause on cable news and in the halls of Congress.

He’ll urge world leaders to hold President Bashar Assad’s regime accountable for a sarin attack in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 21.

While Ghadbian is in Manhattan, another Syrian-American from Arkansas will be back in Washington, trying to sway Beltway power brokers and talking heads to support the rebel cause.

Mouaz Moustafa, 28, who attended junior high school in Fort Smith and high school in Hot Springs, heads the Syrian Emergency Task Force, which pushes for military and humanitarian aid for Syria’s opposition.

Since the revolution intensified earlier this year, Moustafa has spent more time in Syria than in central Arkansas, while Ghadbian still makes frequent trips to Fayetteville.

“I’m teaching a class, actually, once a week called‘The Middle East in World Affairs,’” Ghadbian said. “When I’m not physically there, I do it through videoconferencing, but I’m trying to be there at least once every two weeks, physically, with the students.

“A lot of what we’re discussing is Syria and world affairs, so I’d be able to bring them firsthand insight about the latest developments on this question.”

The revolution is rough on family life. Ghadbian’s wife, Mohja Kahf, is a Syrian-American feminist, poet and author who teaches courses on the Middle East and comparative literature at the University of Arkansas.

“It’s been difficult, that’s all I can say. Extremely difficult for a lot of Syrian families,” he said.

For Syrian Americans who oppose the regime, “these are critical moments,” Ghadbian said. “We believe we could make a difference. We want the killing to stop. We want those who committed these crimes [with] the chemical weapons to be held accountable. We want to see a political solution.”

Ghadbian looks forward to “living a normal life,” to a free, democratic and peaceful Syria where he is welcome again.

“I left back in the ’80s. I haven’t been back since to Damascus, my capital,” he said. “I’ve been one of those who felt that I could speak my mind by staying outside, because if I were to go [back], I’d be arrested as [soon as] I stepped foot in Syria.”

Ghadbian’s Washington office is on Pennsylvania Avenue, roughly five blocks east of the White House. Moustafa works on 16th Street, a three-minute walk from Obama’s front lawn. While Ghadbian works in the old and ornate Evening Star Building, Moustafa has an office in a nondescript, modern office tower, next to the five star, $500-per-room-per-night Hay-Adams Hotel.

There’s a U.S. flag and one from pre-Assad Syria in the sparsely furnished room. A soccer ball sits in a corner. Moustafa played soccer at Williams Baptist College, a single Muslim in a sea of Southern evangelicals, before eventually graduating from the University of Central Arkansas.

Though he’s been in Washington for years, his cellphone still has a 501 area code; and he’s quick to answer phone calls from Arkansas - especially if it’s his mom calling from Little Rock.

During an interview last week, he described immigrating to Fort Smith when he was 12 years old and had minimal English-language skills. “I knew, like, four words,” he recalled.

A good student, he mastered the language quickly, and today he appears on CNN and MSNBC, urging Americans to support the Syrian uprising.

Earlier this year, he traveled with U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to the Middle East, crossing into a rebel-held section of Syria to meet with anti-Assad forces. He’s made nine such trips since 2011, he estimated.

In addition to briefing lawmakers, he works to sway unelected opinion-makers. On Monday, for example, he’s scheduled to appear on a panel at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank, to discuss Syria’s need for nonlethal, international aid.

An American citizen for 10 years, he worked for Democrats on Capitol Hill, but says his current efforts are nonpartisan.

“Syria is not a House versus Senate issue or a Republican versus Democrat issue,” he said.

For a long time, Syria was off most people’s radar. But the chemical-weapons slaughter, caught on camera and posted on YouTube, captured - at least briefly - the world’s attention.

And Obama’s call for military action, though ultimately stalled, fueled a national debate.

“That was positive in the sense that the country did pause and look,” Moustafa said. “We went from peripheral to center stage in a very quick time.”

This week, the debate is shifting to New York and the United Nations, where Moustafa fears there will be a stalemate.

“I don’t see anything coming out of the United Nations that is actually going to change the equation on the ground, unless the Security Council is allowed to take action, unless the members are allowed to take action without a veto from the Russians,” he said.

But the crisis will worsen, if the world doesn’t take action, Moustafa said, adding, “The most terrible option of all is inaction.”

The nation can’t afford to let the problem fester, to sit still while the death toll continues to rise, Moustafa said.

“This is a major national security concern for the United States and its allies,” he said. “It’s a region so volatile that if it goes into chaos, I think it drives the entire world into chaos.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/22/2013