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Sasha Polakow-Suransky

Sasha Polakow-Suransky is a senior editor at Foreign Affairs. His book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, will be published by Pantheon next May.

Recent Articles

A Politics of Denial

Sasha Polakow-SuranskyJan 04, 2002

On the sidewalk outside the Durban International
Convention Center last September, members of India's lowest "untouchable" castes
staged a hunger strike. They were protesting their government's refusal to let
the issue of caste come before the United Nations' World Conference Against
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (WCAR). On the
terrace of the nearby convention-center hotel, meanwhile, their government's
official delegates to the WCAR sat among the world's other ministers, presidents,
and generals, lunching and chatting about cricket matches. Occasionally, the ring
of a cell phone pulled one of them away from the table for an earnest

The Invisible Victims:

Sasha Polakow-SuranskyDec 19, 2001

After seeing the twin towers collapse on TV, Maria Flores left the town of
Zaragoza in northern Mexico and made her way to the border, where she paid
smugglers to bring her into the United States. Her husband, an undocumented
immigrant, had worked as a janitor in the World Trade Center and sent money home
to Flores, her four children, and her mother. Flores, who is six months pregnant,
arrived in New York on September 14. Her husband is missing and presumed dead,
but Flores--who asked that her real name not be used--has little hope of
capturing even a small slice of the nearly $1 billion in relief funds that
federal, state, and nonprofit agencies have promised to distribute. Unable to

Flying While Brown

Sasha Polakow-SuranskyDec 10, 2001

Like everyone else at San Antonio airport on the night of September 17,
Ashraf Khan passed through tight security before boarding Delta Airlines flight
1469 to Dallas, the first leg of a two-day journey to Karachi, Pakistan, where he
planned to attend his brother's wedding. Khan, an 11-year U.S. resident with a
green card, had settled into his first-class seat when the pilot announced that
the plane would be delayed. Minutes later, the pilot left the cockpit, approached
Khan, and asked to speak with him in the gate area outside the plane. There the
pilot declared that he and his crew did not feel safe flying with Khan on board
and even questioned how the 32-year-old businessman had managed to get a

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