A<$>S a boy I used to have a hobby of sorts. I used to paste pictures I’d cut out of newspapers and magazines in a scrap book, mostly pictures of cars and aeroplanes as I remembered.As I grew into a man I let the hobby go until the late 1970s when I resumed my childhood hobby. My interests were mostly political by then. The first pictures I pasted into my news scrapbook were taken from a news magazine and involved the end of the liberation war in the then breakaway British colony of Rhodesia — now the Independent African state of Zimbabwe.

Among the first images I cut out showed an armed Patriotic Front liaison officer from the guerrilla army that had fought the Rhodesian army talking to the British head of the Commonwealth monitoring force, Major General John Acland.

The British had assumed direct rule of Rhodesia as part of the peace agreement to end the conflict. The agreement had the guerrilla army confined to set-up camps, while the armed forces of the Rhodesian military were confined to barracks. This enforced truce would remain in effect until elections could be held, which of course, resulted in Robert Mugabe becoming that country’s first Prime Minister in 1980.

I have news pictures of all these events and that was the start of my documenting the affairs of states and men through what I put into my scrapbook. I have now a total of 11 such volumes. Over the years I have also collected photos and news reports of events that have taken place in Bermuda and, of course, other things to do with my personal life.

I have talked about this because I have another poignant set of pictures which involves conflict — conflict in Bermuda and conflict in one of Africa’s many war zones.

The African scene involved the civil war in Liberia which, thankfully, now appears to be at an end with free elections that have seen the election of Africa’s first woman Prime Minister, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf.

It involves two images of the civil war in Liberia taken by Carolyn Cole of the Los Angeles Times which won her a Pulitzer Prize for photo-journalism. The first picture shows a young boy, perhaps 14 or 15, in a fire fight, aiming his Russian-made AK-47 assault rifle towards the enemy from a prone position on the ground.

The other images shows two young men about the same age in back of a truck. One, who appears to be gravely wounded, is cradled in the arms of his companion, who is also holding an AK-47. There’s no doubt these are images of brutal warfare.

Now let’s turn to the Bermuda image. This one was taken during the infamous mayhem that took place at the Friendship Trophy Final at Wellington Oval in St. George’s. I took the picture from The Royal Gazette <$>and I pasted it next to the African photos in my scrapbook with the caption “The Horrors of War”.

I did not think that it was inappropriate to link the two images together. Conflict is conflict whether it is fought with sticks, machetes or guns. Who can deny that a war of sorts is now being fought on Bermudian streets complete with our young men being shot down on the street by other young men?

It took Bermuda a long time to admit that it had a gang problem and what I call the ongoing “War of the Cousins”.That is what it is — a war of cousins, of close relatives. When we talk about the rival “Town” and “Country” gangs we are not talking about groups of young people who are separated by hundreds of miles. In most cases we’re not even talking about ten miles.Most of my generation are at a loss over the recent outbreaks of gang violence and the loss of life involved. The vast majority of people in my general age group don’t know where these intrusive, negative new aspects of our culture have come from.

But I do know this — this drugs problem has hit our younger brothers far, far harder than it ever hit us. I know from the old neighbourhood that no fewer than three men whom I consider to be my younger brothers went to early graves. Dead of drugs and Aids.

I remember when I attended the funeral of one of these young brothers and asked his uncle what had happened because I only remembered a young boy who was greatly interested in sports and had all the innocence of youth. His uncle had no answer, he only shook his head. At another funeral they talked about another young brother who had a great potential to be an artist but he too was gone — a victim of drugs and, consequently, Aids.This <$>“Town” and “Country” thing started with my son’s generation but from what I observe it has affected the younger brothers of his generation harder than people of his somewhat older age. For now we are killing one another. It is now a war zone.We have brought in a gang expert to help us come to grips with this new reality. We are acting like this is a new phenomenon, something that has never happened in Bermuda before.

On one level this is true. There has never been the desire to kill your fellow Bermudian in such a cold- blooded manner. This, whether we want to accept it or not, actually puts us on the same level of the boy soldiers in Africa or the cold-blooded murderers who serve as foot soldiers in the gang wars that take place in urban America.

I have talked about this before, about the presence of no-go areas in the old Bermuda. I remember the old stories of how, if you did not live over on North Shore in the village area, you could get beaten up if you wandered into that territory.

North Shore had a reputation for having some of the toughest fighters on the island. I have discussed with some women who came from the Bailey’s Bay area how their young men would chase off any other males if they were not from the area. And, based on the tales I used to hear, you ran the risk of having your bike thrown overboard if you were not from St. David’s Island and ventured into that isolated enclave. I have thought about all of this and, in the past, have broached the hypothesis that these internal conflicts between males, mostly black males, only reached their height when there was no common enemy to enforce unity.

When the British soldiers were stationed here, Bermudians played sports with them. But they also fought them. When the American servicemen came to Bermuda there were fights in the old Jungle Room night club in Hamilton and over at the Sea Breeze Club on North Shore. And during the Black Power revolt, it was black youths against the police. There was no such thing as “Town” and “Country.”

This is just an hypothesis on my part, based on the observations I have made about my country. But I believe it should be examined more deeply. For at least two generations Bermuda’s black male population have had no common enemy or, on a more positive note, no common ambition to unite them.

Don’t forget the Black Power revolt wasn’t based around mindless confrontation for the sake of confrontation — it was based on creating a more just and democratic Bermuda, the Bermuda our younger brethren should be enjoying today. But instead of taking advantage of the opportunities they now have, too many of our young people seem only to be interested in the struggle over drugs territory, a struggle which has now turned deadly — that and the negative cultural influences coming from America’s urban areas.I had<$> to admit that during the course of writing this Commentary<$> I had to stop and walk away from the computer as the memories came flooding back about the fate of those I call my younger brothers. For in every sense of the word they were my generation’s younger brothers. There is another reason I feel so much emotion about this situation and that relates to the dream I have of seeing my country becoming a nation in its own right. For I have become increasingly concerned that if we don’t bring an end to the “War of the Cousins” soon, then an Independent Bermudian nation will face the threat of being stillborn.