Women whispered to us of relatives who had been kidnapped, or had disappeared into government custody after a local rebellion was quashed. Some of our escorts were jumpy, and a few shopkeepers stared at them with icy eyes. For junior officers like Abu al-Majd, our visit was rare entertainment. At the ruins, they clambered over huge slabs of limestone, striking playful poses.

A month later, Abu al-Majd texted just to say hello. Later he opened up, talking about things he missed, like pomegranates and grapes from the volcanic soil of his family’s ancestral village in the Golan Heights. As the conversations grew deeper, he seesawed between pride in his national duty and fear, boredom, even anger at the injustices and incompetence he saw in the government’s prosecution of the war.

Checking in regularly, he joined several hundred contacts we maintain inside Syria by telephone, Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and other media: army defectors, Islamist insurgents, activists, government officials, business owners, doctors, commanders on all sides. There are people who support the government, people who loathe it, and people from what they call “the gray middle,” who just want the war to end.

Abu al-Majd — we are using his nickname, and not publishing his photograph, to protect his family — provided insight into the lives of rank-and-file government fighters. He came from an important subgroup, Sunni loyalists. Syria’s large Sunni majority dominates the insurgency, and also the army conscript pool. Many quiescent civilians and state employees are also Sunni; if all Sunnis had rebelled, it is less likely that President Bashar al-Assad would still be ruling.

A Quiet Loyalist

Abu al-Majd grew up in Yarmouk, the bustling Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus where many Syrians also live. Not long after the uprising began with political protests and security crackdowns in 2011, his family lost its home to clashes, and moved to another neighborhood, then another.

He was a loyalist — the son of a retired, low-ranking army officer — but not someone who plastered his Facebook page with Syrian flags or pictures of dead insurgents or pledges of allegiance to President Assad. Mostly, he shared photos of his friends and nephews.