“I have been travelling from this border since I was in school. There was a time when my father would take us directly to Jalalabad without any checks,” Mr Khan says.
Since June 2016, the Pakistani government has made a valid passport and visa mandatory for all Afghans wanting to cross into Pakistan.
“How can you expect Afghan refugees to come to this border when the people they are trying to flee are standing right here. And where would poor uneducated Afghans get passport and a visa in these circumstances?” Mr Khan asks.
A small market just a few kilometres away from Torkham is frequented by Afghans who had fled to Pakistan.
Owaid Ali owns a small food stall. He says he hasn’t seen any Afghan refugees in the market since the Taliban took over the border.
“A few days ago when the Taliban were rapidly taking control of cities, Afghans who came here told me how worried they are at the prospect of living under Taliban rule. But I don’t know how will they escape that life now,” Mr Ali says.
Almost three million Afghan refugees, half of them unregistered, have been living in Pakistan for decades.
But now the government in Islamabad says it has reached its limit and cannot accept more people from the war-torn country, despite pleas from the UN refugees’ agency.
