The Besiegers and the Besieged: Visiting Syria's Madaya With Hezbollah

—MADAYA, Syria -- A white pick-up truck pulled up and a tall bearded man stepped out, wearing black Ray-Ban aviators and a beige “digital” camouflage uniform more often seen on American Marines fighting in Afghanistan. He wore combat boots, unlike the Syrian soldiers manning checkpoints who appear to choose their own footwear and often opt for running shoes.

The boots and uniform were the first indication the fighter was no Syrian grunt; rather, he was the one whom the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah had sent to escort us to Madaya. Hezbollah, along with the Syrian army it has been fighting the rebels alongside, has been besieging the town of 40,000 since last July.

But there was a problem, the fighter said. Shortly before we arrived, there had been mortar and sniper fire from the hillside town and it was too dangerous for us to go in today.

"Boukra, inshallah," he told us with a grin, the maddening response heard so often in the Middle East, meaning, "Tomorrow, God willing." It sounded like an excuse to call the whole thing off. (Residents in town later confirmed the fighting).

But the next morning we met the fighter -- we'll call him Hussein -- at the same spot, a few miles down the road from Madaya. Hussein told us all was quiet and we were quickly driving through deserted hamlets to the town where local activists say dozens have died from starvation and many more are suffering from malnutrition.

Covering Syria often comes down to a question of which group you're going in with, what angle you're going to get. The Syrian army and Kurdish fighters in the north are happy to take reporters to their front lines. The Russians have been cycling journalists through their air base in Latakia since late last year.

Access to fighters with Hezbollah -- which the United States considers a terrorist organization -- is rare. They have an office in their southern Beirut neighborhood of Dahiyeh that speaks with foreign media and once in a while organizes highly choreographed press tours. But reporting on their fighting in Syria from the field has for the past several years been all but limited to their own media outlets.

Much of that stems from their discomfort and the unpopularity with many in the region of fighting fellow Muslims, rather than the enemy they were originally created to fight, Israel. Hussein, who has been in western Syria for eight months, equated the fight against Israel with the battle against the extremists in Syria.

"Our fighting is a principle: good against evil," Hussein explained in halting, but conversational English. The rebels they fight are "terrorists ... who are not Muslims from our perspective."

Hezbollah, which is Shiite, sees the war in Syria as an existential battle that if the Assad regime lost, would cut them off from their Shiite Iranian benefactors. Hezbollah didn't intervene in this "war of defense" until "evil came here," Hussein and his colleagues argue, saying a loss would mean Sunni extremist forces like ISIS and al-Qaeda exploding into Lebanon.

"If we didn't come here, my little daughters -- 6 and 5 years old -- would be sold as slaves like the Yazidis," Hussein said, referring to the ancient Iraqi religious minority. “I would prefer to be in Beirut, with my kids, drinking coffee, but we have to be here.”

Meanwhile, during the entire day, a skinny, pale Hezbollah member buzzed around our crew with a small camcorder making sure the whole visit was documented for “the archives.” Later, a member who works in the media department said the footage is sent to the office of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

Inside Madaya, in addition to the 40,000 residents there are believed to be around 500 to 600 rebel fighters, most of them from the hard-line Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham. It was understood from the beginning we wouldn’t be going into the town but we’d hoped to meet a medic and others we’d contacted in the 500-yard buffer zone between the Hezbollah and rebel positions.

Hezbollah rejected that idea, they said, for safety reasons. Instead, a group of around 20 people said to be residents was proffered. They railed against the "terrorists" in town, accusing them of hoarding food, gas and medical supplies. Hezbollah and the Syrian army are our protectors, they told us.

The scene was staged entirely for our benefit, like so much of what has been seen in five years of this war. We were able to call the medic (in full view of Hezbollah) who said residents weren’t starving but there wasn’t enough quality food and rampant malnutrition continued.

And with that, we had to leave. “I’m sorry for any trouble,” Hussein apologized, “it’s my work."

The recent cessation of hostilities has raised aid agencies’ hopes that more consistent relief could soon reach Madaya and the 17 other designated besieged areas. It has also helped pave the way for a new round of peace talks scheduled to start on Wednesday in Geneva.

Glimmers of hope for those suffering perhaps, but few in Hezbollah believe it means their war will end soon. Instead, Hezbollah’s fight is expanding. Nasrallah announced on Sunday that fighters had secretly been sent to Iraq to join its Iraqi and Iranian allies (and effectively the U.S., the country that considers it a terrorist organization) in the fight against ISIS.

“I would love to go to Iraq,” Hussein said.