boulevard, cell phones in their hand, bags across their arm. A young girl absent-mindedly looks at a shop window. With a nonchalant gesture, she throws her dupatta (scarf worn to cover the breast) over the shoulder and turns around to her companions, watching them laugh out loud at a joke.
The car glides like a fish through the streets, past elegant crowds of carefully groomed, manicured beauties and temples of consumerist culture. A powerful current draws me near the shores of one of the most privileged islands in this archipelago, Lahore University of Management Sciences. No visible borders demarcate one island from another, nor do coast guards patrol their boundaries. And yet, the territory is mapped out so clearly that no doubt remains. Everyone knows what water they belongrape, street robbery, murder – you name it. The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was closed in mid-February, allegedly to stop terrorist attacks. It caused millions of dollars losses in trade and disrupted the lives of thousands of people who have relatives on either side of the border. In early March, the border was reopened, but Pakistani security forces continue to racially profile Afghan refugees by randomly arresting, searching, intimidating, abusing and torturing them.

I was not really surprised then when a high-ranking cleric of the Catholic Church at a recent dinner conversation proclaimed that Afghans were at the core of Pakistan’s security problem. He pointed out incidents of suicide attacks, rape and robbery that involved Afghans (or people from the northern areas, because Pathans and Afghans are often