As recent posting on social media is once again hyping up alleged atrocities of the Assad government, let's revisit one of the very hyped places in 2016/17, Madaya, where media and social media claimed Assad was starving civilians.
As it turned out, just like in Aleppo districts, al-Waer (Homs), Douma and other towns in eastern Ghouta, etc, it was the terrorist factions who hoarded food—including aid sent or allowed in by the Assad government—and either didn't share it with the civilians they held as human shields, or sold it at massively inflated prices no one could afford.
I went to each of these regions and spoke with civilians whose testimonies countered the claims of foreign media:
This is an article I wrote in 2017 after going to both Madaya and al-Waer:
"...
During my visit in June, I met with Syria’s Minister of Reconciliation, Dr. Ali Haidar. Established in June 2012, the Ministry has successfully dialogued with tens of thousands of armed Syrians to enable and facilitate return to their civilian lives.
Haidar explained to me that an agreement was reached at the end of 2015 that included Madaya, nearby Zabadani, and the Idlib villages Foua and Kafraya. That 2015 agreement saw
over 450 people from the four areas evacuated by agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
In a June 2014 interview, Minister Haidar told me that over 10,000 Syrians had reconciled and returned to their civilian lives. According to his office, as of June 2017, that number was over 85,000.
...In addition to occupying schools, “moderate rebels” occupied apartment buildings and the luxurious villas, turning some into prisons. Standing next one apartment, the men told me that it and buildings across the road were used by the occupiers to bomb and snipe the Madaya-Zabadani road below:
“The civilians living below were like human shields for the terrorists. The army couldn’t shoot at the terrorists easily because they’d risk hitting the civilians.”
I asked how life was in Madaya before 2011. “Madaya was a tourist’s paradise,” the mayor replied, smiling, eyes closed, remembering. “People who came from outside of Syria would come to Madaya,” to enjoy the environment of natural beauty.
Further on among the hillside dwellings,
we stood near an apartment that had been occupied, one floor turned into a prison to hold locals until their fates (including execution) were decided in terrorists’ Sharia trials.
Nestled behind the apartment, out of view, was
a factory where terrorists manufactured mortars and rockets.
Above that factory, one of the food storage caches was found after militants had left Madaya. The mayor said, “Last time the army found a storage with more than 400 cartons of food.” Syrian authorities filled five trucks with medicine hoarded by the armed groups, he said.
Walking gingerly over rubble, not yet cleared by engineers of any unexploded ordinance, we reached the bomb workshop, a single ground-level room. Equipment and materials for manufacturing explosives still lay scattered.
Watch | Hidden factory where mortars and rockets were manufactured by terrorists
Down the lane, another villa had also been used as a headquarters and prison until it was hit by Syrian army shelling, forcing the “rebels” to relocate. Another mass food storage was found in a neighboring building, the mayor said.
Entering the relocated prison through a hole blown into the wall, I walked past a room containing a cooking stove and refrigerator, both booby-trapped by terrorists to kill whoever tried to move them. I had learned of this tactic in 2014 in the old city of Homs.
Watch |Visit to the relocated prison
“They left booby-trapped explosives in the houses, all over, even behind paintings on the wall,”
I was told. Similarly, in Maaloula in June 2016,
I was told: “They rigged houses so that when someone opened the door, an electrical trigger with a small charge would detonate and explode a gas canister.”
Two rooms, metal doors welded onto the entrances, had been used as cells. In the middle of another room, a metal bed frame with a piece of cloth tethered at one end.
“They interrogated and tortured people here,” a former FSA militant said. An unwilling participant, he said he was forced by other militants to join, and that he was among the first to take the government-offered amnesty when peace was restored to Madaya in May 2017.
In neighboring Buqayn, Ahrar al-Sham transformed the municipality building into a prison, fortified with sandbagging and bricks. The dank cells were sealed with the same solid metal doors.
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/syria-war-diary-order-returns-to-western-cities-civilians-recount-horrors-of-rebel-rule/