'Terrorism' is a word I grew up with. My first memory of the term is from when I used to watch a cartoon called G.I. Joe : A Real American Hero as part of my cherished Saturday morning routine. Here, an American team of military experts did battle against COBRA, a ruthless terrorist organisation - of no specific nationality - bent on world conquest. The bright uniforms and neon lasers introduced me, aged five, to the concept of armed conflict based on ideology.

One day, on a trip to Milton Keynes's indoor shopping centre, I learned of another ruthless terrorist organisation when a bomb threat was called in against part of the 720-metre-long structure. This time the terrorists were called the IRA, and unlike COBRA's fictional bombs the IRA often succeeded in exploding theirs. As we were forced to evacuate the shopping centre that afternoon, my heart was pounding at the thought of being killed. I clutched onto my mum as we made our way outside. My seven-year-old mind began to wonder about the possibility of death for the first time. What if the terrorists could get us at school? What if the bomb had gone off without a warning? It was the first link I made in my head between the terrorism I saw on screen and terrorism in real life. I had problems sleeping for a few weeks afterwards. It was not the only experience I would have that would force me to consider such unpalatable and anxious thoughts, thoughts that no child should ever have to worry about.

A couple of years later, on a family holiday to India, IRA terror tactics seemed miles away. A childish fright was one thing, but seeing members of your own family in tears was bitterly uncomfortable. This was my family's reaction to the murder of Indian Prime Minister and former Cantabrigian Rajiv Gandhi, who was assassinated in a terrorist attack in 1991. This atrocity caused a very personal sense of loss for my family because Rajiv's grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was a very close friend of my great-grandfather A.M. Khwaja. They had both studied together at Cambridge, and returned to India side by side to push for Indian independence alongside their mutual friend Mahatma Gandhi.

My grandmother - now in her 90s - had also been a convent school classmate of Nehru's daughter, Rajiv's mother, the revered leader Indira Gandhi, who like her son had been assassinated in a terrorist plot while serving as India's third Prime Minister. Our entire extended family was devastated and it is the only time I can remember seeing male relatives weeping openly. It was clear how terrorism could not just ruin shopping trips - or lives - but even alter the path of destiny of a gigantic nation like India.

In the years following these events I witnessed the threat of terrorism grow from a distance, but my teenage years had taken over and my only interest now was in bands like Mötley Crüe and Guns N'Roses. I had long ago banished the images of grief-stricken relatives after Rajiv Gandhi's murder, and the irrational childhood panic of dying from IRA bomb threats, to the back of my mind.

Unfortunately terrorism was to rear its ugly head again with the 1998 bomb blast in Omagh which killed 29 innocent people. It was, at the time, the worst domestic terrorist act ever committed in the United Kingdom. I happened to have been volunteering in the offices of my local MP at the time, and I was taken to witness the extraordinary scene as Parliament opened early from the summer recess, shile politicians and ordinary people scrambled to make sense of the senseless.

I sat in the public gallery, alongside Lord Archer and the Irish Ambassador. Freelance journalist Andrew Rosthorn took me under his wing that day, as he explained the subtleties and nuances of Parliament and its traditions as we watched the speeches. The response of the British government (and the opposition) was, as ever, resolute. The expressions of those in the Commons were grave, subdued and genuine. Thankfully the government did not let the slaughter of civilians derail the peace process and in fact the talks were given added impetus as everyone around the world could see what was at stake. The response was unquestionably the right one and ultimately ended the bloodshed, setting Ireland on a better path.

Three years later I found myself around the New York area during the tragic events of September 11th 2001. I was on an English-Speaking Union scholarship at a boarding school about as far away from what would become Ground Zero as Milton Keynes is from London.

I had only been there two days or so when the terror attacks were announced in chapel within an hour of United Airlines flight 175 crashing into the second tower. Some students I had met lost their parents. I had no words to tell them. Nobody had.

Classes were disrupted as TV screens were set up around campus and phones were made available to anyone wishing to contact loved ones. In the ensuing hours, fear gripped almost everyone. More attacks were thought inevitable. One rumour making the rounds was that there was to be an imminent attack on Camp David. When we heard that American Airlines flight 77 and United 93 had crashed into the Pentagon and Pennsylvania respectively, it seemed like planes were falling out of the sky all over the place.

There was talk of certain areas of New York City being evacuated and the school grounds being opened up for tents as makeshift relief camps for people leaving packed urban areas in case further attacks were to follow. Throughout the day stoic faces sometimes gave way to tears, but only for a moment. I couldn't help but think that the courage and bravery of ordinary Americans was just like it is shown in Hollywood. Their national identity was a source of strength as they supported one another through the shock and the loss.

Later in the evening some students gathered outside the white-spired chapel holding a candlelit vigil, not knowing what else to do. I remember thinking about childhood bomb scares, Omagh, and how I had felt then. The sick feeling in my chest was magnified tenfold due to the scale and proximity of the attacks. The irrational childhood fears long buried resurfaced with venom, churning in the pit of my stomach. Prayers were made. Offering mine, I told those gathered that what had happened had nothing to do with my religion of Islam, which does not condone the murder of innocent civilians – that it was not just an attack on the USA but an attack on humanity.

There was another similar attack on humanity on July 7th 2005 in London. This time, I was a student at UCL when a bus exploded right outside a branch of NatWest used by many students. In fact, my best friend was just a few steps away, walking down towards Tavistock Place when it happened metres away from a statue dedicated to Gandhi-Ji himself. He phoned me instantly, unable in his shock to express fully what he was seeing in the immediate aftermath. He still struggles to talk about the horror of the scene he witnessed that day. I wasn't in front of a TV, and didn't have any internet or radio. Almost as a reflex, I called BBC Radio 5 Live but they had no additional knowledge, and said they'd phone me back. A minute later a familiar voice of a presenter was on the other end asking me about what I'd just rang about. It didn't click that I was on air, as I blurted out exactly what Jeremy had told me. The presenter was incredulous for half a minute, stating he had not heard of anything about a bus blowing up, just some vague reports about an explosion on the tube. I insisted my friend had just told me there was a double-decker bus laying in Tavistock Square, “ripped open like a can of sardines”.

I was more than a little worried about my best friend, and about all my other friends at UCL who would have been in the area going about their daily routines. Later that week I turned the radio on to hear a clip of my voice being played as a recap of the first on-air reporting of those tragic events. It was not a call I have ever wished to listen to again.

In the years following these events, the concept of terrorism in the mainstream consciousness has expanded to include not just 'small' Irish republican groups, Basque ‘separatists’ or the assassination of Indian Prime Ministers: it has engulfed and come to define entire nations. Al-Qaeda and their Taliban friends represent a new kind of terrorism, a total terrorism that operates on a scale of co-ordination and mass murder never before witnessed. To say the events of September 11th have changed the course of human history would be an understatement. Yet ten years later, where are we in the fight against the terrorist killers and their allies?

Osama Bin Laden was nowhere to be found, neither in person nor even on the lips of the media or spin doctors. Capturing and bringing Bin Laden and his followers to justice appeared to have taken a back seat to other goals. Until recently Bin Laden was a forgotten man. Finally, ten years later, he has been found and killed. Sadly today, instead of re-doubling our efforts and focussing on finding and smashing the rest of the terror network, we now hear calls from various quarters to arm rebels in Libya and other Arab countries to overthrow their governments. Even President Obama thinks this is a viable option, at least publicly.

What should be remembered is that it was exactly these kind of policies that helped the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to begin with. Al-Qaeda came out of the Taliban and the Taliban was just one of a number of warring factions that was funded by 'Operation Cyclone', President Carter's initiative to give hundreds of millions of dollars to Afghans in their struggle against Soviet occupation. Operation Cyclone, which was succeeded in loose terms by the Reagan Doctrine, saw further millions spent to fund Afghan rebels. Sometimes the transfer of specialist skills and logistical information was done through Pakistan and its intelligence service the ISI. These people were the forerunners to Al-Qaeda as we know them today. A mixture of Afghans and fighters from abroad, an army of determined Afghans on horseback with antiquated rifles, became - with help from America and Britain - a deadly armed force resplendent with shoulder-launch Stinger missiles.

Today the CIA maintains that they only helped 'indigenous' Afghans and did not directly fund or train the foreign fighters. While this is probably not untrue, the distinction seems to be somewhat artificial. Osama Bin Laden and his cabal formed part of the very nucleus of the Afghan resistance against the Soviet occupation and continued after the Russians pulled out. While Bin Laden, himself possibly a billionaire, also secured funds from his billionaire friends across the Middle East, the fact remains that the knowledge and techniques passed onto them from America led directly to the birth of  the organisation later known as Al-Qaeda and magnified the potential of that group well beyond what it could have ever dreamed of.

The problem has been that once the magnificent Soviet helicopter gunships were picked off with the Stingers, the attentions of the Taliban and those who would later be called Al-Qaeda turned toward their American sponsors with devastating results.

Respected journalists such as the Guardian's John Pilger and a number of other writers have reported on these facts at length and in detail, but alongside reporting of the facts there is much conjecture. Today Marxists, conspiracy theorists and others argue that 9/11 was organised by America as a pretext for a resources war in the Middle East. As an aspiring lawyer, I have debated on both sides of the argument, because, even though such theories are outlandish and laughable, fifty years from now the debate between the far right (who misguidedly think ground invasions, air-strikes and arming rebels is the key to peace) and anarchist anti-establishment radicals will be remembered as one of the great debates of our time. Playing Devil's Advocate is not only a good way to think 'outside the box' but also to uncover some of the ingrained prejudices laying just beneath the surface of those around you, as they unwittingly reveal a passionate anti-Americanism or intense Islamophobia. When it comes to true belief, however, I can say from what I saw first-hand ten years ago there is no conceivable possibility that the American government aided, abetted, counselled or procured what happened that day to fulfil some ulterior purpose. It is difficult to believe any government would knowingly allow for its citizens to be killed. On the contrary, the CIA and British intelligence have done much to keep Britain safe, in ways which the public will probably never know.

What America did do was to give the terrorists we are fighting today, and the Taliban who are everyday killing British and NATO troops, the knowledge, weapons, training and support to be able one day to carry out such attacks as 9/11. Naturally they did not predict this know-how would be turned on them or their citizens (what the CIA terms “blowback”), but that is the problem with arming rebels. You just never know what they will do next.

When America helped to train, finance and arm those who are now the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, it does appear as if little thought was given to what might happen post-Cold War. It seems as if the desire to give the Soviets “their Vietnam” was the primary objective and this short-sightedness has contributed to the state of affairs present today. Sadly, this wilfully myopic behaviour is now being reenacted in Libya where once more there is talk of arming rebels. Are the unintended side effects of boosting terrorist capability to Al-Qaeda levels of co-ordination and sophistication not apparent enough?  Is the desire to depose a Gaddafi, Assad or Mubarak worth risking making hundreds, maybe thousands more Bin Ladens? To assist aspirations for democracy across the Middle-East is one thing, but to think such strategy serves our national interests is illusory.

As history demonstrates, genuine democracy is more than just a bi-cameral legislature with a separation of powers existing in a secular environment. Encouraging democracy in such narrow terms and putting guns in the hands of a rabble in the hopes of toppling Middle Eastern leaders the West no longer wants to do business with is not a good idea, given what such actions have led to already.

The West will be seen as the arbiter of succession of whoever takes over in Libya. If Gaddafi's successors do a bad job and plunge Libya into Iraq-style chaos and sectarian hatred, who do you think will be apportioned the lion's share of blame? Such arbitration imports responsibility. Those that have supported freedom-fighters-cum-terrorists for their own ends in the past must take some measure of accountability for these background acts of facilitation that have helped to create a state of affairs where such an attack on humanity itself, as 9/11 was, can be perpetrated.

Pouring oil onto the fire of Arab revolutionary movements involves the West in a game which leaves us over-exposed. The knowledge and skills required to conduct the next great event of mass murder are already out there. Fanning those flames is not just incautious and imprudent, it takes the world further away from peace and more towards extremism on both ends of the spectrum, where the far right and the far left feed off each other in a frenzy of paranoid aggression.

Supporting such groups in the Arab world today will have disastrous consequences should these organisations double-cross their short-term benefactors and use the very same weapons and expertise to fight America and her allies like the Taliban and Al-Qaeda continue to do, even without Bin Laden.

Our national interest is far better served by not proliferating weapons and knowledge that may strengthen the hand of those who one day might wish to attack innocent civilians within our borders. The horror, disgust and shock of the attacks we have survived already will be nothing compared to when the chickens come home to roost after this latest bout of socio-political engineering.