It was a cold dark early morning in Kabul on 10 November 1989 when I heard the news on the BBC on the radio. At first it seemed completely unbelievable: the Berlin Wall had fallen! There it was: Alex Brody's voice speaking from Berlin and describing how thousands of people on foot or in their Trabis were pouring through, and, yes, some even climbed over the Berlin Wall. Only a few hours earlier, this Wall was one of the best-guarded and most impregnable borders in the world.

The fall of the Berlin Wall was a momentous historical event that triggered huge political changes. Two years later there would no longer be a Soviet Union, no longer a communist Eastern Europe, no longer a Warsaw Pact, and, indeed, there no longer was a communist threat. Most communist parties, especially those in the West, began to disband. This was the end of the bitter nuclear East-West confrontation that, in several instances, had come close to wiping out all of mankind.

Despite the enormity of the changes, it all happened perfectly peacefully, without a shot being fired and without anyone being killed. What brought the Berlin Wall down and, with it, the communist political regime was simply people power – no Western politician or think tank, no secret service or clandestine operation had any influence on these historic developments. Indeed, Western intelligence was just as surprised by what had happened as their Eastern “counterparts.”

For me, lying in a bed under a heavy blanket to protect myself against the morning cold on a mattress that had seen better days, and waiting for Ahmed, who spoke German with a heavy Bavarian accent, to light the little wood stove in my room, this was not only a momentous, but also a very emotional, event. And it had an unreal feeling. I was the only guest at what had once been the German guesthouse in Kabul, in a country in which the East-West conflict was still fought over with weapons delivered by the East and West. Kabul was still controlled by the procommunist Najibullah government and came under regular rocket attacks from mujahedeen forces in the surrounding mountains.