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.”

The war in Syria has taken a serious toll on Hezbollah’s ranks, with around 1,200 killed in four years of fighting. But it is often seen as the price to be paid for valuable tactical training. For the first time, Hezbollah is coordinating with and fighting alongside the more experienced Iranian and Russian militaries, honing its intelligence, planning and fighting skills on the ground. While in the air it has taken a big step forward by deploying reconnaissance drones from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley into western Syria, and coordinating with the Russian Air Force as it carries out its punishing air strikes.

The war is also providing essential combat experience for both longtime fighters and its younger inexperienced recruits. Unlike its wars with Israel, it is now on the offensive against an insurgency, fighting in close quarters against hardened guerrilla fighters with Iranian and Russian special forces. To maximize their exposure, Hezbollah’s men will generally go in for a few weeks at a time and then come back out to Lebanon for a break.

"They need brave hearts," said Hussein, who is in his forties, before smirking when asked where he was during the 2006 war with Israel, the last round of fighting for most of Hezbollah's men.

In Beirut, two of those young members who had come out of Syria just days prior acknowledged their uneasiness with fighting in a neighboring Arab country against fellow Arabic speakers.

"It's not against a country, but against people who don't know about Islam," said 23-year-old Karim. "This isn't about [saving] Assad, we don't care. When you see your neighbor is in danger and is about to lose, you don't have the choice but to intervene."

As the momentum has shifted in favor of the Assad regime thanks to Russia’s support, “the Russians are calling the shots,” said a senior official in the pro-Assad alliance. But every Syrian soldier knows they wouldn’t be in the position of strength they are today without Hezbollah’s better-trained and better-equipped fighters. Hezbollah flags fly next to Syrian flags at checkpoints, the face of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, plastered on posters next to President Bashar al-Assad’s.

But in looking at Hezbollah’s media these days, it’s clear Hezbollah is downplaying its battlefield successes so as not to add friction to the relationship with the Syrian army, which has struggled to hold territory. It’s not just the victories and the disparity in fighting prowess that have caused some tension, several close to Hezbollah said, but also the fact that Lebanese fighters are paid around $500 per month (their standard pay) while their Syrian counterparts earn in the weaker Syrian pound so that a salary these days amounts to only around $100. Hezbollah fighters also enjoy a superior support system that provides warm meals for fighters, a perk not extended to the Syrians.

“They are our brothers,” Hussein responded dismissively when asked about any tension. “We can’t move without [their approval]."

Indeed, when the last van in our small convoy into Madaya was stopped at a Syrian checkpoint, the lead Hezbollah pick-up truck circled back and Hussein politely clarified what was going on, rather than barking orders at the lowly Syrian sentries to get out of the way.

Orders he might have been justified in giving because upon entering Madaya it quickly became clear that Hezbollah was running the show.

The Hezbollah commander who met us was the only one not in camouflage, an unarmed soft-spoken man in his fifties wearing a tan waterproof jacket and olive green pants that wouldn’t have been out of place on the hiking trails of Lebanon’s Chouf nature reserve.

Another two-dozen men milled around in mismatched uniforms with their AK-47 rifles, the Lebanese easy to spot thanks to their quiet, athletic movements. Many more encircled the town, out of sight, guaranteeing that residents stay inside “for their own safety,” as Hussein put it.

There were strict rules for what we could cover. Rather unfortunately for a television network, they included not shooting images of any of Hezbollah’s fighters. Not from the back, not if we blurred their faces, not even from the waist down. So worried were they that their men may have strayed into the line of sight of a camera that they confiscated a memory card, promising to return it "by sundown" with the sensitive bits edited out. Sure enough, we got it back that night with little more than half of the original footage left.

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.