Displaced, repatriated and crossing borders: Afghan people make grueling journeys to survive

The barren desert plain among the mountains of eastern Afghanistan is filled with hundreds of thousands of people.

Some live in tents. Others live out in the open, among the piles of the few belongings they managed to take as they were forced from neighboring Pakistan.

The sprawling camp of people returning to Afghanistan through the Torkham border crossing is the latest facet of Afghans’ long, painful search for a stable home.

More than 40 years of war, violence and poverty in Afghanistan have created one of the world’s most uprooted populations. Some 6 million Afghans are refugees outside the country. Another 3.5 million people are displaced within the country of 40 million, driven from their homes by war, earthquakes, drought or resources that are being depleted.

Over the course of months, an Associated Press photographer traveled across Afghanistan from its eastern border with Pakistan to its western border with Iran, getting to know displaced people and returned refuges and...