R.I.P. Anna Politkovskaya

Travel Blog  •  Frank Bures  •  10.11.06 | 7:18 AM ET

imageA few years ago, I showed up at a small used book store in Portland, Oregon to hear a Russian journalist whose book A Dirty War had just come out. Anna Politkovskaya, who was murdered last week, was a thin woman with short hair and a fearlessness that few writers in the West could conjure. It was not long after Sept. 11, 2001, and we didn’t really know what the world was going to be like, or if we’d be able to travel around the world as we had before.

Politkovskaya had seen the “war on terror” long before most of us had heard of it in her travels to Chechnya to report on the Russian military campaign to keep the province as part of Russia. The wholesale destruction of cities and lives there has been one of the main grievances of the jihadists who attacked New York City.

In my copy of her book, Politkovskaya wrote, “Thank you very much for your attention,” alluding to the review I did for a newspaper. In turn, I thanked her for her work, of which sadly there will be no more.

Still, she said she wrote for the future, and here we are in the future. Her words still speak to us, like this passage about an unusual Russian military unit, which could be advice to Western travelers everywhere.

The officers have taken stock and realized that even if they pile up concrete blocks to the sky, that will not protect them if someone is determined to kill them. All it requires is enough explosive. So there is only one way out. You must look people in the eye, listen to what they say and persuade them to try to revoke the death sentence.

Tags: R.I.P., Europe, Russia, News and Briefs


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