It was 11:30 at night in Ciudad Juarez just south of the U.S. border when we reporters heard on the police frequency that a man had been left hanging on the chainlink fence of the Seven & Seven bar, the same place where a few days earlier 11 people had been gunned down.

Once we were sure that the information was real, we approached the bar only after coordinating between ourselves via walkie-talkie. We arrived at the chilling scene, nervous about covering such an incident, and noticed several cars cruising the area around us.

We managed to work from a distance for a short time until the police sealed off the area, blocking our access. I managed to take several photos of the Dantesque scene in which I could see a man’s body with his hands handcuffed to the fence in the form of a crucifixion. We stayed nearby until they removed the body to be taken to the morgue.

Military and forensic experts inspect the body of a man who was killed outside a nightclub in the border city of Ciudad Juarez August 31, 2009. A man was handcuffed to a fence and shot several times by drug hitmen outside a nightclub, according to local media. The assailants also left a warning message, known as “narcomanta”, at the site of the shooting. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Violence in Ciudad Juarez increases from day to day, in spite of the war against narcotraffic being waged by the city, state and federal governments. That war simply doesn’t work, and the number of dead has continued to increase since 2008, hitting a new monthly record high of 248 murders last July, the majority related to contract killings within organized crime.

This wave of violence has been increasing ever since President Felipe Calderon launched his “crusade” called Operation Chihuahua, which instead of reducing the violence, death and drug trafficking has seen them increase.

The death and violence has affected me as I capture the murders and executions of civilians and police with my camera. What moves me to cover this, in spite of the great personal risk, is the chance to show others what I live daily and reflect on it through a photograph.

Two women hug as forensic workers inspect a crime scene in the border city of Ciudad Juarez July 30, 2009. Local government deputy Claudia Lorena Pérez Marrufo and her companion were fatally injured after a drive-by shooting incident. More than 12,300 people have died in Mexico in a three-way war between rival cartels and the army since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops against the cartels in December 2006. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

One cold night in November 2007, marked the beginning of the war between cartels. We still didn’t know anything about the rivals as we listened on the radio to an exchange of threats between La Linea, cartel of the Carrillo Fuentes family, and Los Chapitos, cartel of Sinaloa. They played narcocorridos (folk music that glorifies the feats of drug bandits) over the police frequency to announce an execution, and I remember the incredulous looks of the police agents to learn that their frequency had been intervened. They seemed to ask themselves, “Who will be the next to fall, gunned down, dead, where, when….?” This was after a “narco-list” had appeared with the names of agents targeted to be assassinated.

This violence in which I live now, incomparable to any time in the past, began to escalate with the 2008 arrest of former police chief Saulo Reyes Gamboa by agents from the U.S. and Mexico, when he tried to bribe an agent to smuggle five tonnes of marijuana into the U.S. Nobody expected such a violent reaction, neither local officials nor journalists. We never imagined what was to come - murders and executions in a war that never ends.

A relative reacts after arriving at a crime scene where 17 patients were killed at a rehabilitation center in the border city of Ciudad Juarez September 2, 2009. About a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a Mexican rehabilitation clinic near the U.S. border on Wednesday, lining up patients before killing 17 of them. The attack was one of the deadliest in President Felipe Calderon’s three-year war against drug cartels, despite the presence of 10,000 troops and federal police in Ciudad Juarez who constantly patrol the city’s streets. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

I remember that the first to fall dead were local policemen on duty. The image of a bullet-riddled patrol car with a dead sergeant draped over a bloodied steering wheel, his bulletproof vest perforated by high caliber bullets from an AK47 assault rifle, nicknamed the “goat’s horn” for its curved magazine, was the first in a long succession of images to begin the criminal unleashing never before seen in my city.

The days in which the war is at its peak are days of insomnia during which I go out before dawn to document rival narcos left crucified only a few meters from police stations, “narcomantas” (a large cloth with a threatening message written on it) left as wrapping to a bloody head, or mutilated bodies, and return home after midnight to my waiting family worried about my work and the risks I take.

Police investigators work at a crime scene where seven bodies were found gunned down in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico, November 25, 2008. The bodies of seven men with signs of torture and bullet wounds were found along side three banners, also called “narcomantas,” threatening rival gangs, according to local media. More than 4,300 people have been killed in drug violence this year as cartels from Sinaloa state try to dominate the Mexican drug trade, fighting rivals and the security forces. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Many times my wife and my parents, tormented by the daily news, begged me to leave the newspaper, to look for another job, but my passion is greater. They now understand what I do and support me, but pray to God to watch over me each time they hear my radio sound.

It gets worse when we hear radio threats against specific policemen, “Mendez you’re next…you’re on the list….don’t run, we’re waiting for you..” When we hear a narcocorrido we know that minutes later there will be an execution someplace in the city. We know it’s happening, and just wait for the police to confirm.

We reporters aren’t free from the threats. Killers’ radio alerts often include the advice, “…to all the media and the Red Cross we warn you not to approach the injured, wait until they are dead, because if not we will kill you along with them if you pick them up still alive….” It is chilling to hear that on the radio.

But even our passion for journalism isn’t enough to take us too close the place where there is a “54 by a 66″ (death by firearm). On many occasions we would see people destroyed by the bullets from a goat’s horn. We’d often arrive before the police because they were afraid to get close, arriving in caravans with from five to 20 agents to seal the area. Then from less than a kilometer away would come the sad, raucous and piercing sound of bullets.

Forensic investigators inspect the body of a fugitive U.S. marshal, as soldiers gather around the crime scene, at a canal in the border city of Ciudad Juarez March 25, 2009. Mexican police have found the decomposing and badly beaten body in Ciudad Juarez, the main battleground in Mexico’s drug war. Picture taken March 25, 2009. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

When I return home in the early morning to my waiting family, after having received threats and seen the results of at least ten executions on my shift, I would see the streets desolate, no police patrols, only reporters heading home at the end of our shift, and others beginning theirs. The police would be in their barracks, afraid to leave even to attend a call for help. The support between colleagues, reporters, photographers, editors, is mutual. We watch over each other via radio, inform each other where we’re going and if we’ve arrived home safely. “Hey buddy ray, just reaching my 16 (home), everything 9 (fine)….where you headed, animal?”

The threatening narcomantas weren’t sent only to cartel rivals but also to high-ranking officials, Governor Jose Reyes Baeza, district attorney Patricia Gonzalez, Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz, commander of the Army’s Fifth Zone Felipe Jesus Espitia, and even to the president himself. One of them was placed at the scene of a massacre of seven men who were themselves accused of executions, extortion and kidnappings in the city.

Other narcomantas were placed on the bodies of different victims, including one on a victim whose decapitated body was placed with his muzzled head shrouded in a pig’s mask. Another body was found inside a pot used for boiling pork. They even make fun of some of them by putting Santa Claus hats on them.

A man lies dead among evidence markers at a crime scene in the border city of Ciudad Juarez July 13, 2009. More than 12,300 people have died in Mexico in a three-way war between rival cartels and the army since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of troops against the cartels in December 2006. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Several times when I was taking my daughter Enya to school I had to rush to one of these scenes, whether a shootout, execution or even a prison riot, with her beside me as there was no other safe place nearby to leave her. Enya was around five when she first began to understand my work. She would ask me where I was going and if there was an execution. I began to leave her in the car so she wouldn’t see the raw scenes.

Death threats are the norm rather than the exception among journalists. One colleague, Armando “El Choco” Rodriguez, was assassinated at the door of his house as he left to take his small daughter to school. Neither local nor federal police have been able to find El Choco’s killers, despite the repeated demands from guild leaders. This happened a few days after contract killers left a body hanging from an important bridge in Ciudad Juarez. The head from that body had been placed at the base of a monument named “Freedom of Expression” in Journalist Square.

Police investigators remove the body of reporter Armando Rodriguez from his car in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, northern Mexico November 13, 2008. Suspected drug gangs shot dead Rodriguez, a Mexican crime reporter who worked for El Diario de Ciudad Juarez, near the U.S. border on Thursday, the latest journalist victim of a brutal drug war in which traffickers are targeting the media. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

The wave of violence has altered my life, and that of thousands of Juarenses, in every way. Nightlife has been the most affected as bars, cantinas and restaurants remain deserted. Anyone who goes out at night does so at great risk.

Once, a group of contract killers arrived at a seafood restaurant looking for members of a rival band. They found them in a corner table, called out, “This is it, mothers..”, before opening fire on the nine of them, all of them youths. The scene caused a nervous crisis among all those present, customers and staff.

Killers sometimes will firebomb cantinas without worrying about who is inside. Life continues here but it will never be the same. We ask ourselves when it will reach its limit and then get better. In the meantime I have to keep working.

Sometimes it’s necessary to reach nearby towns like Samalayuca in the Chihuahua Desert, or Villa Ahumada where last February soldiers and contract killers had a shootout that ended with 21 dead - the scene was of the dead lying on snow, frozen cadavers with guns in their hands and bullet holes in their heads.

Policemen and soldiers carry one of 21 bodies after a shootout between drug hitmen and soldiers in the town of Villa Ahumada, some 130 km (80.7 miles) away from the border city of Ciudad Juarez February 10, 2009. Mexican drug gang violence near the U.S. border ended in a shootout with the army on Tuesday and killed 21 people. The killing spree began in the early hours of Tuesday when around a dozen suspected drug hitmen drove into the farming town of Villa Ahumada in SUVs and dragged nine people, including several police officers, out of their houses, sources close to the attorney general’s office told Reuters. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

These deplorable events that I live and relive daily happen in spite of the massive presence of the military and Federal Police participating in Operation Chihuahua. All the dead, including police and civilians, some of them innocent victims of circumstance of crimes that are sanguinary, unimaginable and inhuman, have been happening in what has been called “Mexico’s best border town….Ciudad Juarez,” a town that wants out of this war. Juarez doesn’t want to be owner of the war but it is simply immersed in it. The population is tired, we want to return to our normal life and not ask ourselves, “How many deaths did the sun rise to today?”

Every day I wake up thinking that this has to stop, and that in this city I will raise my children and try to give them the best life possible.

Bystanders look at a crime scene where a man was gunned down in the border city of Ciudad Juarez June 30, 2009. A massive army surge has failed to calm raging drug gang violence in Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city on the U.S. border that is at the heart of President Felipe Calderon’s drug war. REUTERS/Alejandro Bringas

Patooni Muhanna, who works at a women’s shelter in Kabul, speaks about women’s rights since the fall of the Taliban. Patooni says that despite some positive changes, domestic violence and self-immolation are still concerns.

Follow news from the Afghan election here.

Masum Ghar, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan

Operation in Sanjaray

Embedded with the Canadian Army in Kandahar.

On May 16th I reached the forward operating base (FOB) after traveling in an convoy of armoured vehicles that left from Kandahar Airfield.

We set out from the FOB in a different armoured convoy traveling for a “secret cleaning operation” in Sanjaray village. I was told that the only condition for me to go was to not send pictures until the end of the operation.

We followed the tracks left by the tanks in the burning desert sand, surrounded by orange-colored mountains, until we reached an improvised base belonging to the Afghan National Police (ANA). This base offers a view of Sanjaray and the entire valley.

The Afghan soldiers based there don’t have electricity or running water, and they sleep on blankets stretched over the ground under a half-constructed building that still has no windows. We spent the night sleeping in the open next to the tanks.

The joint operation in which more than a thousand soldiers from Canada, the U.S. and Afghanistan were participating, was one of the largest ever carried out in this region considered to be rife with Taliban fighters.

At daybreak on the 17th we were already on the march into the valley. We watched the sun rise from behind the mountains as we entered Sanjaray. Our goal was to hike between three and four km each day, and thus cover the 12 square km in which the operation was focused.

The soldiers hiked for hours but advanced slowly with their backpacks weighing some 30-40 kilos. One other factor that determined their speed was the work of mine-sweepers that cleared the way ahead with the help of dogs.

The streets of Sanjaray, where the call to prayer is heard morning and night, are a capricious labyrinth of mud-brick, circular houses with not one straight line; no two windows or doors are the same size. No houses are alike but they all have their courtyards full of grape vines and cherry trees. Their fields abound in wheat and sorghum, as well as poppy and wild cannabis.

The landscape is biblical with waterholes, small streams, men with long beards walking their donkeys and children dressed in shirt-like robes. The mechanized soldiers with their high tech equipment are practically extraterrestrial.

The searches began early in houses and compounds that were on the soldiers’ list. At one house they found material to make homemade explosives (HEDs), and at another they arrested three men suspected of belonging to the Taliban, but they didn’t allow me to photograph them. I was told they were taken immediately to Kandahar.

We continued until noon checking courtyards, yards, stables and kitchens, and interrogated those present and asked about those family members that were absent. They took photos, climbed up to attics, jumped over walls, crossed rivers, and on and on. They stopped to rest often in the shade, and as the day went on they stuck closer to walls for cover.

At the end of the day we found a place to sleep, a narrow strip between cherry trees and a stream, where the village gives way to wheat fields. A Chinook helicopter landed to replenish our food and water. We had consumed five or six liters of water each after a day that peaked at 45 degrees Celsius.

The following day began a 4 am. In just a few minutes the soldiers had their sleeping bags rolled up, did a quick wash-up and swallowed some form of energy to begin the nine hours of hiking to come.

We crossed through plantations searching the mountains that crown the valley to the north. Helicopters flew overhead all day long as we hiked for hours together with an Afghan Army platoon working parallel to us. For hours we found nothing and nobody, crossing one river with water up to the waist and another by walking across a pipe that serves as a bridge.

The heat and lack of water finally made us stop, and a Chinook brought us more. We got ready to spend the night in what looked to be a quiet place, until we were ordered to sleep with our boots on.

I was told that the Taliban planned an attack for that night. Sure enough at around midnight I awoke to the whistle of rockets, but I couldn’t tell where it came from. A sergeant told me not to worry. If you could hear the rockets it meant they were aiming for someplace far, he said, because the rockets travel faster than sound.

More rockets followed and then came flares to light up the night for snipers, and that continued until almost daybreak. It was only later that I found out that the rockets were fired by the Canadians, and that we weren’t attacked. They told me that the Taliban had “decided to remain in hiding.”

A Chinook woke us at 5 am when it brought more supplies, landing very close to us and blowing towels and bags around the camp with its powerful rotors. We were ready for the final hike.

The second officer in charge of the operation assured me that it had been a success, with the best result being that all his men were unharmed. “We showed the Taliban that we can come and go whenever we want.” Even though they never showed their face.

During nearly two decades of violent Kashmir conflict, I have covered fierce gun battles, between Indian soldiers and Muslim militants, suicide bombings, rebel attacks, massacres, protests, mayhem, violent elections and disasters.

But the question that always comes to mind is “what is the hardest to shoot?’

I always remember protests or riots, clashes between stone throwing protesters and gun-toting Indian troops. Stress levels quickly rise as me and my text colleague, Sheikh Mushtaq, realize that our assignment will not be easy whenever we go out, mostly on Fridays, the day when Muslims offer congregational weekly prayers, which turn into weekly protests against Indian rule in Kashmir.

There is literally no place to hide and shooting is nearly impossible when angry protesters take to the streets and rocks rain down; Indian troops retaliate with tear gas shells, rubber bullets and many times with live ammunition. Most of the time we, with protective gear and camera equipment strapped to our shoulders in backpacks, are stuck in the narrow streets of downtown Srinagar as impatient crowds and ruthless troops battle for hours.

Blood is always spilled in the streets of Kashmir where tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of an anti-India insurgency.

It was a pleasant and beautiful day in Srinagar, a city of over one million ringed by snow-capped Himalayan mountains, but tear gas brings bittersweet tears to my eyes and rocks sometime make me bleed. I clutch my camera, adjust the focus and aperture and keep on shooting masked rioters and police replying with slingshots, teargas shells and bullets. A rock came towards me, I ducked but it hit another cameraman. He was bleeding lying beside me. On many occasions, I had to drop my camera and take care of injured reporters and photojournalists. Several times even I was not lucky.

Years back I was hit by a tear gas shell and then enveloped by a cloud of dust and tear gas smoke. As the tear gas shell exploded between my legs and tore my calf muscle badly. Mushtaq from a distance was looking at me helplessly as the rattle of gun fire followed screams and cries for help. I was bleeding and fell unconscious. After hours I found myself in a hospital and later spent months in bed missing the thrill of photography.

When Kashmir last year faced some of the biggest anti-India protests in nearly 20 years, photojournalists faced the wrath of security forces and angry protesters.  Many of us were beaten up by riot police and demonstrators, protesting Indian rule in the disputed region. They break our cameras and sometimes beat us with batons and gun butts.

It is painful and disturbing but when I see people writhing in blood and dying with bullet wounds, my pain disappears and I feel guilty when police do not allow us to photograph the tragedy. I feel disappointed when they stop us after ambulances and hospitals are attacked.
People often ask “what is the most difficult to shoot in a conflict zone?”  I always say “protests or rioting.”

I was relaxing Sunday evening killing zombies on the Xbox, when I got a news alert on my blackberry stating Tamil protesters were blocking two lanes of traffic on the Gardiner Expressway.  The Gardiner is a major freeway that goes through downtown Toronto. We don’t often see big protests or demonstrations, so my excitement begins to build.

The freeway snakes in between high rise condo buildings, and my first instinct was to figure out a way to get a vantage point up in the building to shoot the protest from a high angle.  I spotted a couple of guys enjoying a few beers on their 10th floor balcony  and shouted up. They were happy to come down and take me up to a spot overlooking the site of the protest. I took my pictures of the blockaded road, filed them, and got back down to street level to see if I could get in nice and close.

I ran up the onramp to the freeway, and spent a few minutes shooting the flags in the crowd, before making my way to the front lines. The demonstrators were peaceful, and the police seemed to be somewhat patient with the large crowd. Demonstration leaders kept the crowd calm with megaphones, telling them to keep the peace, but that didn’t keep a few aggressive situations from developing.

After I made my way to the front of the protest, some of the demonstrators and police began pushing and shoving, and a protester got hit in the back of the head with a baton by a police officer.  I’m still unsure why tempers escalated, but the man emerged from the scuffle with a bloody head. It was extremely dark and though the batteries in my flash were dying, I was able to shoot a frame every 3 seconds and managed to catch the police officer hitting the protester in the head.

The crowd began to yell “Sit down, let the media see what happened!”. People started to sit down as the man emerged from the crowd with a bloody face. I ran down to try to get in nice and close, where I was able to make some frames of him.

Shortly after the scuffle, the demonstrators agreed to leave the freeway, and it was over.

The police scanner says there was a shooting in Zone 7, very close. We arrive right behind the firemen. Two men on a motorcycle had been shot with the same bullet. Neighbors start to gather as I make a few pictures of the rescue crew loading the victims into the ambulances and rushing off to Roosevelt Hospital in Guatemala City. The neighbors are angry and start taunting the police, accusing them of incompetence.

Out of the corner of my eye I see family members arriving. You can tell who they are by their faces. Their confusion and disbelief stands out even through the dozens of people scuttling around. They are not crying yet…They still don’t know exactly what is going on. Eight-year-old Erica Estrada, dressed in shades of pink and burgundy, follows her grandmother. She draws my attention. Her hands are in her pockets and her face is twisted, but her eyes are still dry. Her grandmother screams as she realizes that her grown son, Erica’s father, was wounded badly and her husband, who was sitting on the back of the motorcycle, wasn’t expected to live.

Erica is half everyone’s size. Dropping the camera from my eye, I lower it to my waist, to her level. She is surrounded by strangers who have formed groups around her and her grandmother and who in their own horror seem to completely forget the young girl. Erica finds my eyes and stares at me in pain.

Still shooting with the camera at my waist, I have nothing to hide behind. Erica covers her face and begins to cry. Her grandmother calls to her from somewhere inside a separate group of bystanders. As she removes her hands Erica’s stare locks onto me again. She’s pulled by the arm and rushed back to their car just as my partner finds me and pulls me back to his car. We are off to the hospital.

We are already there when Erica and her grandmother arrive. They have gone from crying to screaming and each moment a new relative shows up in another taxi. Once again Erica seems lost and alone among a sea of adults, all in their own pain. Poor girl. I look around for someone to help her, anyone. Someone to hold her and tell her she’ll be alright, that the pain will go away.

She asks different people about her father and her grandfather but gets no answer from them. “Is my grandfather dead? Is it my father?” Everyone is on cell phones. She turns to another. I keep working but with the camera still down low there is no way to hide the tears swelling in my own eyes.

Erica bends over in emotional pain, crying aloud. I can’t take any more. I let go of the camera and touch her shoulder, and she looks up. “It’s gonna be okay” I tell her. She looks right into me. I find a relative of Erica and ask him to please look after her.

As I leave, I give up trying to hold back the tears. I cry aloud as I drive home, and as I sit on my bed. I can’t get Erica out of my mind. I lie there crying for three hours. I cry when I re-tell the story to others, and as I write it just now.

Guatemala’s National Police reports an average of 17 murders per day in the country of some 12.5 million inhabitants, giving it one of the highest murder rates among countries formally at peace.

It’s 10 pm and there’s a cold wind blowing in the parking lot of a strip mall in Ciudad Juarez. This is our “base” of operations where two other photographers and I await news from a radio tuned to the police frequency. One of my colleagues reads a newspaper while the other describes to me his experiences covering the violence. His experiences are stories of terror.

Suddenly over the radio waves come the clear sounds of a “narcocorrido,” or Mexican folk music that glorifies the feats of drug bandits. One of the photographers jumps. “It’s going down,” he says. Baffled, I ask what he means. “The bandits interrupt the police frequency with that music as a signal that they’re about to deposit a package (victim’s remains).” It’s a sober warning and clear example of the power of narcos along much of Mexico’s northern border.

Forensic workers stand next to 11 of 16 slain bodies dumped in an abandoned lot in the border city of Tijuana September 29, 2008. Police found 16 bodies dumped in the seedy Mexican border city of Tijuana on Monday in what the state attorney general’s office said could be a revenge attack for the arrest of a local drug gang hit man. REUTERS/Stringer

Shadows come to life here. They move, threaten and make their presence felt. Silence is broken by the crack of bullets followed by sirens, the rumble of army and police patrols, sobbing, and finally more silence…It’s just another day on Mexico’s northern border. Two, three, ten…who counts them? The numbers make sense only to statisticians that keep tabs on the anonymous bodies that pile up in the city morgue.

Soldiers patrol a boulevard in the border city of Reynosa in the state of Tamaulipas December 8, 2007. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

What happens here is no different from what goes on in other places like Reynosa, Nuevo Laredo, Tijuana, Culiacan, Guerrero, Michoacan, and even Monterrey. It’s more of a feat to name places that do not suffer from narco-violence. Covering it is like covering a war. We have to deal with the threats of narcos and with the pressure put on us by the police and army. The military convoys, the dark uniforms of the federales (federal police), the checkpoints and the yellow tape that marks crime scenes are all part of the new landscape. My friends tell me that this is the new Colombia. I don’t doubt it one bit.

A federal police searches a group of passengers for drugs and weapons as others stand guard at a check point in the border city of Rio Bravo in the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, Mexico January 10, 2008.  REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

The narco-culture has a long history in Mexico. The only thing new about it is the unprecedented level of violence. Residents of neighborhoods rich and poor receive undesirable visits in the form of hooded policemen investigating crime scenes, or assassins and soldiers in gunfights that often take innocent victims. Desperate parents listen to shots as they wait for their children to be evacuated from school.

A policeman carries a child away during a gun battle in Tijuana, in Mexico’s state of Baja California, January 17, 2008. A shootout on Thursday, after police agents moved in on a drug cartel group, left four people injured and forced the emergency evacuation of a school in Tijuana, according to the local media. REUTERS/Jorge Duenes

Friends of mine that live in cities like Tijuana almost never go out at night to drink or eat any more for fear of losing their lives in a shootout. And if a policeman appears in the same restaurant they will quickly ask for their food to take out, because so many policemen are publicly executed by narcos. The psychosis dominates daily life. Residents are hostages in their own homes, suspecting anything and anyone that is unfamiliar. The tourist areas dedicated to the permanent flow of Americans that cross the border to drink and dance are now all but deserted thanks to the U.S. government’s warnings. “Stay away from bloody Mexico.”

A woman reacts after arriving to a crime scene where a relative was gunned down in the border city of Ciudad Juarez August 22, 2008.  REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

Nobody knows for sure if the guy next to you is a narco soon to be executed or if he is the executioner. If you go to a dance hall and one of them wants your girl he will have her, by whatever means. It’s frightening to speak to police because you never know which side they work for. They take photos of us and arrest us for asking questions, as their way of finding out why we are there. Taxi drivers, gasoline pumpers and hotel employees are among the anonymous informants watching the movement of the police, the army and everyone else.

Forensic workers and soldiers carry the bodies of three soldiers found dead in the community of El Barro, some 20 km (14.9 miles) away from Monterrey, northern Mexico October 22, 2008. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

One night a taxi driver that didn’t know who I was began to describe in detail the assassination of soldiers that happened here last November. The driver was a “hawk,” an informant for the Gulf Cartel, and admitted it openly.

A simple phone call to a journalist or a newsroom turns into orders about what they can and cannot publish. Assassins converted into editors return to the crime scene to “peruse” photographers’ pictures and decide what they want published. Sometimes we get a direct threat to leave the area. “There’s nothing for you here, a——-. Leave now or you will be next.” And then there are the fake checkpoints where the details give them away – sneakers instead of boots, AK-47 instead of R-15 (the AK-47 is the narco weapon of choice). This is the Old West, except that the victims are counted in the thousands.

Mexican soldiers inspect a vehicle at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Tijuana January 6, 2007.  REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

It’s difficult to write a level-headed account of what is happening here. I find it especially hard for me because apart from having experienced it personally, my colleagues suffer it daily. Impunity is rampant, and we’re all victims.

The widow of slain state prison guard Rodolfo Garcia holds his photograph after a memorial service outside the state government building in the border city of Tijuana April 20, 2007. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

By many accounts this is just the beginning, with the worst yet to come. Meanwhile the state of the economy, ignorance and poverty continue to fuel the fire of this war that seems all but lost for now. All we photographers can do is remain on alert knowing that at any time a few more lives will be snatched in the endless dance of life and death. How many more? Only time will tell.

Forensic workers look at the slain body of police commander Mario Sanchez after being executed by unidentified gunmen in San Nicolas de los Garza, Monterrey May 19, 2007. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo

A Congolese refugee in a tattered baseball cap, worn clothes and blue flip-flops begged me for a cigarette at Kibati, a camp for 65,000 people displaced by fighting in eastern Congo.

I scolded him, saying smoking was bad for his health, as if anything could be worse for your health than living in this conflict-racked corner of Democratic Republic of Congo.

Machine gun fire erupted nearby and people dived for cover, ducking into rows of flimsy tents made from torn sheets of white plastic stretched over sticks.

“Mister, mister, come lie down in here,” a voice called from one tent as bullets hummed nearby like an electrical current.

I snapped a few blurry pictures of people running before crawling through the curtain door of the tent, where a man and two children huddled on the ground. I kneeled above them and took a few more photographs.

“When you hear gunshots, if you lie flat, you can be OK, but if you stay up like that, paff!” said the man, Boniface Buhoro, a tailor who had fled weeks of combat further north in an area now controlled by anti-government Tutsi rebels.

Several people had already been killed by gunfire in this refugee camp in North Kivu province at the foot of Nyiragongo volcano on the front lines between Congo’s army and advancing rebels. At least two more were killed in the next few days.

For 45 minutes, I lay with my legs intertwined with Buhoro’s, his three-year-old son Sadiki wedged between us.

Army boots crunched past outside over black lava rock as soldiers fired their weapons at full stride.

At first we assumed rebels were attacking, but in fact drunken army troops were fighting each other, shooting randomly.

In the panic, soldiers went from tent to tent robbing refugees who had already lost almost everything, typical behavior for the badly paid and poorly disciplined army.

“Every day, something like this happens. They rob and steal and kill us or rape the girls. We don’t even have anything to eat, but they take what they want,” said Buhoro.

I crawled outside as things calmed down.

The man who’d asked me for a cigarette lay face down.

“He’s dead already — stress,” said someone in the small crowd around the body. He had apparently died of heart seizure.

This is how many Congolese die: if not by the gun, then from conflict-induced illnesses, preventable diseases or hunger in a resource-rich but shattered nation lacking infrastructure.

More than five million people have died, most from lack of access to food or basic health, during a decade of fighting and upheaval in Congo, according to aid agencies. This makes Congo’s enduring conflict the deadliest since World War Two.

I spent two years in Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda from 2002 to 2004, covering the regional war that engulfed much of central Africa. The day I took shelter with Boniface was the first on my latest trip to report again on Congo’s seemingly unending cycle of violence.

Most of the victims perish far from sight, deep in the bush.

This time, death seemed all around.

Driving to the front line early one morning, mist hung over the road and smoke from Nyiragongo volcano darkened the sky.

Marking the first rebel position were the bodies of two government soldiers, a bullet through each of their skulls.

Traveling north later, I reached the hilltop village of Kirumba, where local Mai-Mai militiamen had clashed with government troops fleeing the Tutsi rebel advance.

The army quickly buried their dead, but the Mai-Mai corpses were set on fire by beer-drinking troops.

I found them the next morning, fat still bubbling on one charred corpse, its genitals cut off. Another body had an umbrella stabbed into its face. Soldiers joked and laughed.

Back near Kibati camp, I followed a funeral procession into a sun-dappled banana grove. A tiny purple casket containing the body of eight-month old Alexandrine Kabitsebangumi, who had died from cholera, was being lowered into the dark earth.

The grove was filled with graves. As women sang a haunting hymn, the mourners moved aside, allowing me to photograph.

There’s no joy getting a good picture from a baby’s funeral.

Another victim, another memory, another ghost.

After two weeks, I left Congo, crossing into Rwanda.

As my car climbed the steep hills, providing stunning scenic views back into Congo — that beautiful, terrible place — I passed another procession carrying a body on a bamboo stretcher.

I didn’t stop. I just kept driving.

Reuters photographer Siphiwe Sibeko talks about his experiences capturing dramatic images of the outbreak of violence in South Africa.