Looking at Human Rights

As a native of Pakistan working full-time in the field of human rights, Surina Khan, executive director of the San Francisco-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), has a lot to say about America's war on terrorism. Her family fled Pakistan in 1973 after her uncle, Air Marshal (Retired) Asghar Khan, began laying the groundwork to run for president. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was then the Pakistani president, retaliated by accusing Surina Khan's father, who owned a business that was a subsidiary of a U.S. corporation, of being a spy for the CIA. Asghar Khan later ran for prime minister against Bhutto in 1977. He lost and was placed under house arrest. Bhutto was eventually overthrown and hanged.

Khan's family, which relocated to Connecticut, maintained its ties to the country. Her father kept his business, and Khan went to junior-high school in Pakistan. Most of her siblings have moved back to Pakistan or elsewhere in South Asia. Her cousin Omar Asghar Khan is now a member of General Pervez Musharraf's presidential cabinet. But Khan and one of her brothers, a lieutenant colonel in the US Marines, have put down roots in the U.S. She is one of the nation's leading experts on the political strategies of the Christian right, and at IGLHRC -- which defends the human rights of all people who are subject to discrimination because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or HIV status -- she works with the United Nations and human-rights groups around the world.

Khan spoke to the Phoenix from her office in San Francisco.

Q: I know that things have changed in Pakistan since you were there in late January [for a conference organized by Pakistan's Sustainable Development Policy Institute], but do you have any sense of how long Pakistan will be able to maintain its alliance with the United States?

A: I think it is going to be very difficult. There is enormous popular discontent and uneasiness. A large number of people of Pakistan do not agree with what the US is doing in Afghanistan. At the very least this resentment of the US has to be addressed.

Q: Do you think there could be another coup?

A: I think that this is possible, given that General Musharraf has replaced three of his generals with people who agree with him. I don't know where that leaves the three dismissed generals, but they have people they could rally.

Q: Could we reach a point where fundamentalists gain more power and take over? Obviously, the worry here is Pakistan's nuclear capabilities.

A: I think that is entirely possible.

Q: What is your immediate family's reaction to the "war on terrorism"?

A: They are generally critical of U.S. foreign policy. We are in agreement about that and agree also that the U.S. has certain responsibilities. For example: going in and bombing Afghanistan and reaching the particular goal of wiping out the Taliban is not enough. There has to be follow-up work there and in other countries, such as Indonesia, India and Pakistan, in which the U.S. has played a role. They have a responsibility to rebuild the infrastructure of a country. We also agree that the U.S. has to deal with the issues of Israel and Palestine. Beyond that, we have disagreements. I don't think that waging war on Afghanistan is a solution. Whereas some members of my family think that wiping out the Taliban will [be the answer] -- as long as the U.S. follows through on rebuilding the country.

But I think that even if the U.S. were successful in wiping out Osama bin Laden and all of his terrorist cells in Afghanistan, and presumably here in the U.S. and in Germany and how many other countries in which they exist ... which would be very difficult ... there is still a younger generation of 15-year-olds who will grow up and be even more resentful of the US. And until we deal with that issue of resentment from generation to generation, the answer is not more military attacks but, rather, a just foreign policy and general respect for everyone in the international community. That is what it essentially comes down to.