Born free – but the child is already part of the clash of civilisations

I RECALL that September 15, 2001, was a Saturday. I remember it not only because it was four days after Tuesday, September 11, but also because it was five days after a friend of mine had become a father for the first time.

On that Saturday night I took my mate out for a pint for an hour. It wasn't one of those 'wetting the baby's head' kind of things there is something about modern 30-something fatherhood which doesn't find that necessary or appropriate. It was just a chance to catch up after a dramatic week, a quiet moment before it was his turn again to take charge of the benign turmoil that the arrival of their new daughter had visited upon their household.

It wasn't a session of any kind I was driving, he was already drunk on the euphoria of recent fatherhood and was only sipping his pint. In fact I remember we had a very clear-headed conversation. It had been a momentous week for him and his family; it had been a momentous week for the world. These were the two themes we tossed back and forth.

That week in September 2001 was the last time (until this week) that I watched television news channels almost constantly. I still remember that Tuesday afternoon listening to the radio. Joe Duffy had gone live to Niall O'Dowd in New York after the first plane crashed into the Twin Tours. I remember rushing to switch on Sky News when the second plane struck. Over the following days I was glued as the story moved on. Ireland had its national day of mourning in solidarity with America while Americans had thousands of funerals and memorial services.

For obvious reasons my mate hadn't spent the week watching television news. He was present for the birth on Monday and of course he visited the hospital each evening. However, he had gone back to work on Thursday and Friday anxious to save his four days paternity leave for the following week so that he could be around as his new daughter settled in at home. He will of course always remember where he was on September 11 "when the second plane struck," but it is that life changing moment on Wednesday which he will remember most from that week.

By the weekend the media pundits were beginning to explore the longer term implications of the terrorist attacks on America. On Saturday night my pal and I chewed over some of their analysis. I remember that one of the conclusions we arrived at was that his newborn daughter would live in a very different world to that we had grown up in. During our teenage years, as we became more aware of the news in the world around us, the Cold War dominated our consciousness.

I remember, for example, that the "threat of nuclear holocaust" was one of the essay topics on our Leaving Cert English paper. We were certain that by the time his newborn daughter came to do her Leaving Cert the world would be dominated by the theme of a conflict between Western and Arab-Muslim cultures. In coming to that conclusion we were conscious firstly of the gulf of misunderstanding which has opened up between Western and Arab-Muslim cultures. At its widest this gulf gives rise to the perception by many in the Arab world that the West, especially the United States, is its enemy.

The second reason was that it was clear to us that there were some insane people in the Arab world contorted by hatred who were prepared to die and kill in order to make their point through terrorist attacks.

The third reason was that we sensed that it was almost inevitable that elements of the western world, and elements in the United States in particular, would mishandle the response to these terrorist attacks.

Because language can be judgemental I need to pause here to say something about the terms I'm about to use. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. One man's guerrilla army is another man's independence movement. One man's liberating army is another man's occupier. So let me use the relatively neutral term "guerrilla movement" to mean the terrorists/freedom fighters or defenders against invaders and let me use the term "establishment" to mean the state/occupier/invader forces.

Guerrilla movements advance their cause with violent outrages which they hope will prompt a cycle of over-reaction by the establishment. They hope that this, in turn, will give rise to greater support for the guerrillas among their host population. Guerrilla movements can never match their enemy with force, so instead they leverage moral outrage against the establishment.

History is littered with examples of where this strategy was applied, usually successfully. Indeed many modern historians of terrorism and independence movements cite Michael Collins and the Irish

'war of independence' as one of the most successful applications of this strategy. Contrary to some nationalist myths there was no mass popular support for the 'old' IRA's actions at the start of their campaign. Collins and the IRA 'flying columns' mounted a series of attacks on RIC and army outposts for weapons, some of which inevitably led to the killing of police officers or soldiers.

These violent activities by the IRA were originally condemned by the local populations, by churchmen and by local newspapers. Then, in a typical over-reaction, the British imposed oppressive martial law in Ireland county by county as the IRA atrocities increased. As a result the IRA got stronger, more numerous. Most guerrilla campaigns never lead to an outright victory. If it gets enough support in its host community a guerrilla movement usually manages to force a stalemate and a negotiated peace settlement of some kind. Collins' strategy was followed in places as diverse as South America and post-colonial Africa.

Nelson Mandela, in a recent BBC television biography, talked of how, having undertaken a detailed study of terrorism techniques, he opted for the strategy of a bombing campaign designed to provoke a response from the apartheid state which would further mobilise the black population to make the state unworkable.

Osama bin Laden's strategy was also obvious. It was designed to visit outrage on the United States in order to provoke an over-reaction or mis-targeted retribution. As a result he hoped to intensify hatred of America in the Arab-Muslim world.

The current Bush administration has fallen directly into the trap. While the war on the Taliban had some impact as a recruiting sergeant for Arab terrorism, its was limited. Many in the Arab world saw it as a proportionate response after the Taliban had failed to hand over bin Laden and his network. However, many elements of the Arab-Muslim world see the campaign now being visited upon Iraq as a mis-targeted act of retribution.

On that Saturday night in September 2001, we had expected that the intensification of Western-Arab hostilities would come to a head when my pal's newborn daughter was in her teens, or perhaps her 20s or 30s. She is now just 18 months old.

Little did we realise the week she was born that the world she would grow up in would change so rapidly.