BEIRUT, Lebanon — The people of Moadamiyeh on the outskirts of Damascus live in the dark, among piles of rubble, with little food. Asked to describe what day-to-day life is like, one resident named Ahmed simply answers: "You rarely hear any laughter."

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Ahmed is 26 and a former English literature student in Damascus. Now — as the civil war in Syria enters its fifth year — his days are spent documenting life in Moadamiyeh as the town struggles to survive, recording what happens with photos and video for local activists opposed to the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad.

Ahmed, who spoke by encrypted messenger service and whose name has not been used for security reasons, describes the majority of the people who live here as "neutral" — they are neither with or against the government or the rebels.

"Neutral is the best way to describe these people," he says. "If I say I'm with Assad inside the town, that puts my life at risk, and vice versa. They are afraid, because they've suffered more than anyone can imagine."

Women walk from the rebel held suburb of Moadamiyeh to the government held territory Tuesday Oct. 29, 2013 in Damascus, Syria. Image: Dusan Vranic/Associated Press

On most days, he doesn't go to bed until around 5 a.m. because there is so much to document. He gets about five hours of sleep before he gets up again — to a cold cup of coffee as there is no gas for the stove.

Most buildings are crumbled from frequent government bombings and the shops are closed. The streets are filled with playing children. But a thick smoke hangs over the neighborhood. People burn whatever they have at hand — household goods, shoes and clothes — to keep warm or cook.

Residents use solar panels — brought from Damascus through bribing government officials — to charge spare batteries for phones and laptops during the day. Still, says Ahmed, without reliable electricity, it's hard for students to study at night.

Today will mark four years since protests first began in Moadamiyeh. "We were the first after Daraa," says Ahmed, naming the southern city where the arrest in 2011 of a dozen schoolboys sparked demonstrations that slowly took hold across Syria, prompting a brutal crackdown from Assad and a widening civil war which has so far claimed at least 220,000 people, according to the United Nations.

A further four million people are refugees, trapped on the borders of the country that was once their home. And as the war in Syria enters its fifth year, there is no sign that the fighting will stop.

Moadamiyeh, located about six miles from the city center of Damascus, used to be peaceful. Before the uprising against Assad began in 2011, there were plans to link the suburb to central Damascus via a metro.

Elliot Higgins, an investigative social media and weapons analyst who is also known as Brown Moses, says that the town has strategic importance to the Assad regime which dropped chemical weapons on the town beginning in 2013. Human Rights Watch documented that Moadamiyeh was hit with rockets carrying what the group suspected was the chemical agent sarin.

Earlier this month, four barrel bombs were dropped on the outskirts of the city, Ahmed says. Fortunately they fell in open areas, although Ahmed says that for residents this still implies "a message from the regime."

A Syrian soldier escorts men as they have arrived from the rebel held suburb of Moadamiyeh to the government held territory Tuesday Oct. 29, 2013 in Damascus, Syria Image: Dusan Vranic/Associated Press

Bombs and mortar fire are a regular occurrence. "There isn't shelling in the centre of the city. But towards the battlefronts, it happens pretty much every day. Sometimes bullets from the battlefronts reach the city — leaving injuries behind," he says, darkly.

The Syrian government have pushed to keep control of Moadamiyeh because of its location — it is both close to the capital and the Mezze airbase — and there are now checkpoints at all entrances to the city.

Ahmed says that residents who are known opposition supporters have had their passports blacklisted by the government, meaning that they have no IDs with which to cross the checkpoints. And because of the checkpoints, residents are trapped in the city during the shelling. The suburb already endured a long, brutal siege from Oct. 2012 to Dec. 2013 which ended with a truce.

"The regime demanded that we raise the regime flag on the highest point in Moadamiyeh, and to return weapons and armored vehicles taken from them in battle," says Ahmed."In return, they'd allow food to enter."

But not all of the 40,000 people who fled have returned, since there isn't much to return to.

While the United Nations entered the suburb in July, bringing food, they didn't bring enough to feed the roughly 30,000 civilians who still live there. The video below, which was shot by an activist, shows scenes of tumult as Syrian Red Crescent tried to deliver food.

Ahmed says that, although the supplies weren't much, families have been surviving on it for more than six months. "The people of Moadamiyeh are famous for storing food," he says. "During the siege, we used to have one meal consisting of herbs and olives and sometimes cactus," he says. "I sometimes see people watering their plants. The plants were what saved us from dying when there was no food. We ran out of everything."

Though the siege has supposedly been lifted, there is not much food to be had. Most people eat only one meal a day consisting of rice or soup. There's no bread because all the bakeries have been destroyed.

It seems it could be a deliberate strategy to starve people into submission once more: Government troops around Moadamiyeh force people to remove clothes and shoes at the checkpoints on their way back in to ensure that they're not carrying food with them.

Asked if he would still protest if he had known how Moadamiyeh would suffer, Ahmed pauses before he answers.

"I would still protest," he says. "If the siege and the bombs still happened, then so be it."