GEOFF BENNETT: Afghanistan is now in its sixth year of Taliban rule.

Their return has brought economic collapse and deep uncertainty, especially for the country's young people.

Many Afghans are still trying to flee in search of safety in another country.

At the same time, more than six million people who had escaped are now returning, some of them deported from neighboring countries.

Special correspondent Leila Molana-Allen and videographer Eric O'Connor traveled across Afghanistan, from its western border with Iran to its Eastern frontier with Pakistan, at the famed Khyber Pass, speaking with Afghans struggling each day to build a future or simply survive.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: It's one of the largest forced migrations of human beings in the world.

But here in Afghanistan, millions of people are being pushed back into the country they risked everything to leave.

Amir has just been forcibly deported from Iran with his sister, nephew and niece, who he looks after as his own kids.

AMIR, Deported From Iran (through translator): I didn't come back to Afghanistan willingly.

I have nothing here, no job, no life, no home.

In Iran, at least I had some income.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: He lived there for 20 years, eking out a living doing casual labor.

But after the war with the U.S.

and Israel began, with jobs in short supply and food prices rocketing, Afghans were no longer welcome.

AMIR (through translator): They often said, go back to your own country.

We'd go to and from the bakery in fear.

Even those who had documents were afraid.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Eventually, Amir was arrested at work.

Many men picked up and deported suddenly like this are separated from their families.

Amir begged police to at least let his know and take them with him.

AMIR (through translator): My biggest concern right now is that I have no money.

I keep thinking, how am I going to live?

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: The vast majority of Afghans going to and being pushed back from Iran are unemployed young men desperately seeking work to escape Afghanistan's foundering economy.

Wakil is queuing to register to return to a country he tried to flee just days ago.

He and his friends walked for eight hours through the burning desert, led by smugglers demanding a steep fee, cash they had to borrow in the first place to make the journey.

Before they could make it to the nearest city, they were caught.

WAKIL, Deported From Iran (through translator): They caught the six of us and beat us severely from 8:00 in the morning until noon.

They kept us under the sun and tortured us.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Many of them were injured.

WAKIL (through translator): My ears hurt a lot.

My brother was also beaten and his eardrum was torn.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: He says the Iranian border police stole whatever they had left before dumping them back at the border.

It's an accusation we heard from many here.

WAKIL (through translator): They search us and take whatever money we have.

They even search inside our clothes.

They leave us without any money to return home.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Now he's back, injured, in debt, and with even less than he started with.

International aid cuts have had a devastating impact here, just as they face greater need than ever.

The U.N.

refugee program's budget in 2022 was $240 million.

This year, they will be lucky to get a third of that.

Those funding cuts have decimated cash support for refugees.

Returnees used to get $350 per person.

Now they get a mere $170 for an entire family.

And Iran's authorities have made clear to the Taliban if it can't or won't stop Afghans crossing into Iran, they will.

We have just been told that we can't go and film at the border because Iranian border guards have just opened fire at some Afghans trying to cross into the country.

A young woman who's been shot is rushed to the clinic by Taliban border guards.

They won't let us follow her inside.

Is she OK?

Twenty-year-old Ahmad faced that wall of bullets trying to sneak across the border into Iran last week.

He made it across, but was arrested almost immediately.

AHMAD, Deported From Iran (through translator): They fired a burst of gunfire at the ground beneath our feet.

One of the fragments hit here.

They beat us with their fists and feet, rifle butts, sticks, and stones.

They put a gun to my head.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: After spending a week in a detainment camp in horrendous conditions, he's developed a nasty case of scabies too.

AHMAD (through translator): They brought us to the camp.

They kicked us and punched us.

I fell to the ground and my hand became like this.

It keeps getting infected.

And then it starts bleeding.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: This isn't the first time he's tried to get to Iran.

I asked him why he'd take such a risk, knowing he likely won't make it and could die in the attempt.

There's no life here anyway, he says.

AHMAD (through translator): I had no choice.

There was no other way.

And I have no choice but to go again.

When there isn't even food for us to eat, what are we supposed to do?

Aren't I only young?

Aren't these other people so young?

We're all forced to do this.

This is life, misery.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: The destitution here is so inescapable that this boy, severely injured and barely able to walk, will endure beatings and bullets again and again with a chance to make a few dollars to send back to his family.

Wakil says it's the same story for every young man he knows.

WAKIL (through translator): Millions of young people have gone to the borders because of poverty.

We never know whether these young people will return safely or not.

They risk their lives for a piece of bread.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Wakil doesn't have any money left to get home, and the budget cuts are so severe the NGOs here can no longer even provide transport to the city.

There's nothing more they can do for him.

With evening closing in, Wakil walks out onto the endless highway to try and hitch a ride.

If he can't find one, along with many others, he will have to walk 75 miles through the boiling sandstorm of the day and the freezing desert night to get there.

On the other side of the country, a different border, an equally dire crisis.

More than six million Afghan refugees have crossed back into Afghanistan over the last three years, 600,000 of them just this year across this border with Pakistan.

They have been pushed back by a crackdown by the Pakistani authorities and the reigniting of the conflict between the two countries.

Many of these people haven't lived in Afghanistan for years.

They arrive exhausted and penniless with no idea how they will rebuild their lives here.

They enter through this cage, heading towards the reception center just a half-mile away, Omari Camp.

Charlie Goodlake is the U.N.

High Commissioner on Refugees' head of fund-raising in Afghanistan.

CHARLIE GOODLAKE, Senior Executive Assistant to U.N.

High Commissioner for Refugees: Things couldn't be more difficult here.

It's nearly 40 degrees.

The weather's dry,.

It's arid, and people are living in tents with no air conditioning, with no electricity, sometimes for weeks at a time.

I have been doing this work for many years, and rarely have I seen such difficult circumstances as this, and such concern and uncertainty for people's futures.

And I think that's particularly the case for women and girls who are coming back.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Jamila sits in the reception tent waiting for her papers.

She and her nine children crossed the border this morning after hiding from the Pakistani authorities for months.

JAMILA, Deported From Pakistan (through translator): The situation in Pakistan was very bad.

Because of the police, we had to hide in different places every day.

They would catch people and deport them.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: At night, they'd wake to the sound of Pakistani police trying to break down the door, hunting their husbands.

JAMILA (through translator): Whenever they came, they insulted the women and told us: "Get out of the house."

They said: "If you don't leave tonight, we will pour fuel and burn your belongings and your house."

We couldn't sleep from fear.

My nine children were crying day and night.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Eventually, staying became even harder than coming back after her 8-year-old son, Yunus, was targeted.

JAMILA (through translator): When they couldn't find the adult men and fathers, they take their children instead.

One day, they dragged my little child into a vehicle.

He told them he was from Kabul and they beat him and left bruises all over his body.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Jamila was born in Pakistan.

She mourns the happy life she had there before the authorities began targeting Afghans.

Afghanistan is a place she only knows from stories.

Now she must raise her kids here.

JAMILA (through translator): Before, our life was very good.

We built a beautiful house.

But now it's all gone.

Now we have nothing.

Thank God we are safe.

But we have nothing.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Leila has just been forced to cross the border with her six daughters.

The youngest is just 10.

Abandoned in a country they barely know, they have nothing and no one.

BASRA, Daughter of Leila (through translator): We can't survive here.

Back home, we worked in people's homes to support ourselves and get by.

But, here, we can't make a living.

There's no water, no electricity.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: No more high school or university for Basra and her sisters.

And finding work as a woman in Afghanistan is getting harder every day; 14-year-old Maryam was preparing for her first year of high school back in Pakistan.

Suddenly, she faces a future locked inside a country where educating teenage girls is now a crime.

MARYAM, Daughter of Leila (through translator): I want to go to school and have a better life.

I want to study so that I can become a doctor.

Sometimes, we go two or three days without having anything to eat.

Now that we have come back here, where can we go?

We don't have a tent or a house.

"Are you afraid?"

I ask her.

They can stay at the camp for a few days, but after that, they're on their own.

Leila is terrified.

After working menial jobs day and night to earn money to feed her kids, her body is a wreck, covered in rashes, scars, and scabs.

It still wasn't enough to save her girls.

LEILA, Deported From Pakistan (through translator): We have nothing.

What can we do?

It's so difficult here.

It's getting colder.

And they're so young.

LEILA MOLANA-ALLEN: Days later, Basra tells me they're now living under a top, which is flooding as the seasonal rains start.

Her little brother is sick, not having eaten in days.

And there's no help coming.

The U.N.

estimates two million more refugees could be pushed back into the country and the deprivation and misery that awaits them here by the end of this year, helpless, hopeless, a generation of families with nowhere to go, desperate to be anywhere but here.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Leila Molana-Allen on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.