My Enemy, Myself

Who's your enemy? Why fight? Over the course of three years, Belgian-Tunisian photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa has traveled to both sides of the world's longest-simmering conflicts to ask these pointed questions. What he heard from combatants in the Gaza Strip, the disputed Kashmir region along the India-Pakistan border, and tribally divided South Sudan captures the futility of wars that never end -- and can't be won. Tragically, bitter rivals are often fighting for the very same reasons.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY KARIM BEN KHELIFA | JANUARY 2, 2013

GAZA 

"My name is Tomer Brok; I'm 19 years old. I'm a sergeant in the Israeli army. My enemy is anybody that threatens the country, the safety of its civilians, and the free life we lead. I never encountered my enemy face to face, and therefore I never killed one of them. My biggest fear is that people here will stop thinking it's important to get to the army and that will slowly lead to our destruction and the disappearance of our freedom. Freedom to me is each individual being able to live his life with dignity as he wishes and without fear. Terrorism for me is wanting to take away the freedom of others. At the end it's taking away the right to choose and the liberty that everyone should have just for being a person. My goal in life is first of all to do in the army all I can to protect my country and in the future to go ahead and build a family and to stay in Israel to never leave it; this is where my roots are. And to continue to give to the country as a civilian."

Karim Ben Khelifa

 

Karim Ben Khelifa is a freelance photojournalist, CEO of emphas.is, and a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He tweets as @KBenK. You can see more of his work at instagram.com/karimbenkhelifa.