Ali Khan [Washburn University]: "The world will mourn today's brutal murder of Russian journalist and human rights advocate Anna Politkovaskay in Moscow. In writing my book, A Theory of International Terrorism (2006), I relied on Anna Politkovaskaya's reports about the situation in Chechnya that she always delivered with passionate clarity. Below is the story of a man caught in the web of violence, a story in my words but derived from Politovaskaya's passion for truth:

Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, writes in the vicinity of the Russian literary tradition, shared by Chekhov and Solzhenitsyn, which daringly exposes the horrors and atrocities unleashed in name of the motherland. In her book, A Small Corner of Hell, Politkovskaya describes the ordinary Chechen life in wartime. Though the book's narrative embodies fictional style and literary diction, the stories told with pitiless honesty are nonetheless real. One telling story is that of Vakha found lying on "withered autumn grass" along with hundreds of other fleeing Chechens while Russian helicopters "fly so low that you can see the gunner's hands and faces." Women and children wail. With his mouth pressed to the ground and wearing a black suit with a white shirt and a black tie, Vakha tells his prostrating comrades, all folded up in the fetal position, how it is the folder that has saved his life. For "every time the helicopters come, I take my folder, get out some paper, and pretend to write. This way the pilots believe that I am not a terrorist."

Those who can hear him laugh, finding fault with his naïve logic; says one, what if the pilots think "you're taking down their license plate numbers." Vakha equipped with his life-saving folder is hoping to join his mother, wife, two unmarried sisters, and six children, all of whom fled a week ago. As helicopters circle above and machine guns shoot mercilessly in nearby fields, the folder jokes begin to multiply: "Putin will wonder why all the Chechens are running around with folders." "Vakha, what color should the folders be?" "You don't know how lucky you are, man; they might think you're counting us. And that means you're on their side." Relishing the folder jokes and believing in a happy future, Vakha and his new buddies are slowly crawling toward the checkpoint. A bit tired, Vakha concedes that "all is in Allah's hands" but still insists that the folder has always helped him, in Russia's first war against Chechnya, and this one.

Perhaps exhausted from waiting in the long line, Vakha veers off into a nearby field infested with landmines. Within minutes, Vakha is dead in an explosion. He, however defined, is still lying on the ground but no more in the fetal position. His hands rest quietly several feet away from the shredded contents of his black jacket and his legs have vanished. His magic folder with its blank sheets has also turned into anonymous dust."