WALLS

"Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall"- were famous words uttered by president Ronald Reagan in a speech on June 12, 1987 at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. These words were seen as a spark that would light the fuse that would bring the cold war to an end. The words were spoken meters away from the one structure that so profoundly symbolized the great divide, The Berlin Wall. It seemed like his words acted like dynamite in pushing a movement over the edge. Two years later a chain of events across eastern Europe caused the wall to breach uniting a divided people forever.

This month the twentieth anniversary of this defining moment was celebrated across Europe and the international media was abuzz reprising that moment and deciphering history and the sequence of events that changed the world. The true hero who lit the fuse was Mikhail Gorbachev who had come to the conclusion that the soviet union and its policies were unsustainable and counterproductive. He was rapidly putting into motion changes that even the so called democratic leaders of the west were openly afraid of. He was convinced in dismantling the status-quo for good. He was no longer interested in keeping the eastern block under the soviet shadow, as he was relinquishing to the will of its people. So when the moment came for the wall to be breached he stepped aside and let history take its course.

A united Germany to many brought back visions of the past they were uncomfortable with. According to records, Margaret Thatcher and George Bush Sr. were both not keen on seeing the wall come down. They were afraid of the balance of power shifting in the aftermath and how that would play out. And the famous Ronald Reagan speech, was more of a ruse, a distraction he was seeking from his domestic voes surrounding the Iran-contra scandal. But to his credit his Hollywood charisma bore fruit. He reclaimed some of his lost glory with the speech and achieved mythic status among many of his supporters. To some extent he even prodded the movement a little to gather steam.

The Berlin wall fell twenty years ago. In the decades since many walls have gone up and those that existed before have grown stronger and wider. India and Pakistan point nuclear warheads at each other, threatening to wipe out the one people that they are. North Korea seeks nuclear weapons to escalate its feud with the south. Israel builds a wall around Palestinians to keep suicide bombers at bay in the process confining a people much like they were in another part of the world. America builds a fence along the Mexican border to keep people away from seeking a better life. Humans have even managed to build walls on oceans. Countless electronic walls go up censoring expression and freedom of thought. Psychological walls seem to divide people more than ever on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, gender and sexual preference. Humans seem hell bent on devouring their humanity taking us to some dark places.

What is surprising is that while millions of words were generated and billions of bytes of information exchanged about the fall of the Berlin wall, no head of state took the opportunity to utter any Reaganesque words asking for all walls to be torn down in the interest of our very survival. We all know that when the Himalayan glaciers melt away and the polar ice caps seize to exist, no wall will be able to hold back people who will seek help from those spared. Nature sees no walls, all it sees is six billion ants digging theirs and their children's grave. It is what it is.