For most of Abdul Manan’s life, the border dividing Afghanistan and Pakistan was little more than a line on a map. Like generations of men before him, Mr. Manan, 55, commuted every day from his mud-brick home on the Pakistan side to the wheat field his family had cultivated for decades in Afghanistan. His four sons crossed the border with him, transporting electronics and groceries from markets on one side to homes on the other.

It was a journey shared by tens of thousands of residents in the Pakistani town of Chaman, the site of the last official border crossing where people could pass through using only their national identity card from Pakistan. Then, in October, the gates slammed shut.

Pakistani officials say the restrictions are a necessary security measure — though most of the travel originates on their side of the border — as the country has grappled with a resurgence of cross-border militant violence since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

For the first time since the border was drawn over a century ago, the Pakistani authorities are requiring residents to show a passport and visa before crossing — paperwork that virtually none of them have, they say.

The rules have upended their daily lives. Small traders say they have been effectively locked out of their shops, where their goods rot and bills for shuttered stores mount. Farmers have missed out on wheat harvests, leaving them unable to feed their families, they say. Porters, who once earned up to $3.50 a day by transporting goods like electrical items and groceries on their backs or on hand trolleys, have lost their only source of income.

In recent weeks, Chaman has erupted in violent protests as residents demand that the restrictions be lifted. “Everything has been taken from us. The land is now inaccessible,” Mr. Manan, 55, said. “We are starving.”

Mr. Manan is one of thousands who have gathered every morning since late October at a makeshift protest camp two miles from the border crossing. Throughout the day, the demonstration’s leaders shout speeches to the crowds, which roar with applause. They break only briefly for midday prayers before gathering again until sunset.

The tensions boiled over in mid-June, after security forces were called in to clear protesters who had blocked the main highway linking Chaman to Quetta, the provincial capital 75 miles away. The officers clashed with the protesters, leaving more than 40 people injured.

In the days that followed, the two sides tried to negotiate but government forces arrested protest leaders, generating accusations that the authorities had invited them for talks as a trap. Pakistani officials say that the arrests were necessary after attacks on paramilitary forces and attempts to seize government buildings.

Negotiations resumed last week and, on Sunday, the government released protest leaders in exchange for a temporary end to the daily protests at the border.

Negotiators also announced that the government would once again allow local tribesmen to cross the border with only a national identity card. But Pakistani officials have not issued an official statement on the issue and many observers are skeptical as to whether they will in fact restore the old system.

For generations, Pashtun tribes living along the rugged frontier traversed the area freely, their lives woven together by shared ancestry and culture, as well as economic dependence.

In 1893, British colonial officials established the Durand Line, a 1,600-mile border dividing Afghanistan and British India. Border tribes continued to cross freely, a tradition that persisted even after the creation of Pakistan in 1947. Extended families lived on either side of the line, crossing to dance at weddings or offer condolences at funerals.

“The only real sign that you had crossed into Afghanistan was the sudden switch in driving sides — from the left in Pakistan to the right in Afghanistan,” said Abdul Rauf, 42, a trader who runs his family’s plastic supply business across the border in Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials first introduced restrictions on the border crossing after the U.S. military invaded Afghanistan in 2001. American forces were concerned about the movements of Taliban fighters.

Two years later, the Pakistani authorities built the so-called Friendship Gate in Chaman, a large concrete gateway along the main highway connecting Chaman to Spin Boldak, the nearest town in Afghanistan.

As the years passed, the constraints tightened further. Border crossings were restricted to 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day. Pakistanis from Chaman, in Balochistan Province, and Afghans living in Kandahar Province over the border were required to show their national identity cards to cross. Porters — an essential work force of around 15,000 people — needed special paperwork issued by Pakistan’s border security officials.

And in 2017, a larger border fence was constructed, limiting movement through the dozens of informal crossings along the border. People living close to the fence either relocated or obtained a security pass to travel from one side of their village to the other.

Pakistani officials said that the most recent border restrictions were necessary to prevent militants from the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or T.T.P., from infiltrating Pakistan from Afghan soil.

Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan three years ago, violence by the T.T.P. and other militant groups has surged in Pakistan, stoking tensions between the two countries. The Pakistani authorities have accused the Afghan Taliban of providing safe haven to Pakistani militants, a claim that Taliban officials deny.

“These measures aim to strengthen border management and prevent terrorists from entering the country from Afghanistan,” said Shahid Rind, a provincial government spokesman.

But tribes complain that the restrictions have also decimated their livelihoods and, if they remain in place, will forever reshape the fabric of communities.

Mr. Rauf, the trader, said he has not been able to visit his shops across the border for the past several months. “The plastic merchandise I stored outdoors is ruined, and the bills for closed shops — electricity, security — keep piling up,” said Mr. Rauf, who estimated losses exceeding $1,180.

Beyond trade, family ties that span the border have been strained, as people cannot visit graveyards, attend weddings and share in celebrations.

Activities that are “an obligation in Pashtun society” have become “impossible,” said Iftikhar Noorzai, 23, a porter. He said that he had not seen his two sisters, who are married to men in Kandahar, during two Eid festivals.

Even though the Pakistani government promises to help with passport applications, the greatest challenge for most Chaman residents is proving their Pakistani citizenship. The authorities require documents dating back to the 1970s, which many cannot provide.

Human rights groups have urged the government to find a way to balance national security needs and the rights of residents to maintain their livelihoods.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent watchdog, urged “immediate engagement with the affected communities, all stakeholders and Afghan representatives through dialogue and diplomacy” to resolve the issue.

At the protest camp in Chaman, families are exhausted and worried. “Will I ever get back to my land? What will become of my sons if the border stays closed?” said Mr. Manan, the farmer. “We can only pray for a solution that shows mercy on the poor like us.”

The night Kabul fell to the Taliban, a young lawyer named Nargis Baran was holed up in her apartment there, scrolling through news reports in disbelief. Then her boss called.

It was Aug. 15, 2021, and the U.S.-backed president of Afghanistan had fled the country as militants closed in on Kabul, the capital. Their swift advance shocked Western officials and the world, bringing the Taliban back to power after nearly 20 years of war with the United States and allied forces. Thousands of people surged toward the airport, desperate to board the last flights out as the city descended into chaos.

Ms. Baran, then 26, was an unmarried woman living with her widowed mother, and now they were afraid to walk outside. Her boss had not called to reassure her. He warned her that people like her — Afghanistan’s rising stars — had suddenly become targets.

“He said, ‘You know the time we spent on our education, on our self-development and self-growth, now doesn’t matter at all,’” she recalled.

Now, almost three years later, she has been able to build a new life in New York City because of an audacious escape plan hatched by law professors thousands of miles from Afghanistan. Her story is one of liberation — from the Taliban, who were notorious for oppressing women — but also of loss for what she and other promising young people could have done for their home country had they not felt their lives were in danger.

Ms. Baran, a law specialist for the country’s largest bank, was part of a generation of idealistic, Western-educated Afghans who had pledged to rebuild their country as it emerged from years of conflict. The Taliban, ousted from power in 2001 when Ms. Baran was just a child, were also known to treat minority groups harshly. Her background as a religious and ethnic minority — she is Ismaili, a minority sect in Islam, and from the Pamiri ethnic group — intensified her fears about what might happen to her if she could not flee.

“The only goal I had always in my mind was to serve my country,” she said. “The moment it needed me the most, I couldn’t do anything.”

The United States’ failed attempt to defeat the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks had been destructive and deadly for Afghan civilians, and for thousands of military personnel and contractors. As the American public soured on the war, the Obama and Trump administrations had moved to withdraw troops. Then President Biden set Sept. 11, 2021, as the final date to pull out.

In the summer before the deadline, the Taliban conquered more and more territory. Even as Ms. Baran heard news each day that another province had fallen, including her home province near the Tajikistan border, she never thought the insurgents would retake the capital. Her ties to the United States put her at acute risk.

She had gotten a master’s degree at Ohio Northern University and had helped found the Afghan-U.S. Law Alumni Association, which received funding from a Washington nonprofit supported by the State Department.

As harrowing scenes of the chaos in Afghanistan filled television screens in the United States, Karen Hall, a former State Department official who had taught Ms. Baran and other Afghan students at Ohio Northern, started fielding panicked calls.

“It was just this immediate tsunami of insane worry,” recalled Ms. Hall, who had once been stationed in Afghanistan.

On Aug. 16, 2021, Ms. Hall wrote on Facebook, “Afghan graduates, if you are trying to emigrate, can you let me know in a PM.” But she noted that even as officials were compiling names of past staff members of U.S.-funded programs, safe passage was not guaranteed.

She and an informal network of U.S. law professors would ultimately help more than 150 people, including at-risk lawyers and their families, flee Afghanistan, mostly to North America and Europe.

The American military was scrambling to withdraw. Roughly 125,000 people were airlifted out on emergency flights by the end of August 2021. Some Afghans died trying to hide in the wheel wells of departing planes. About 170 others died in an ISIS suicide bombing at the airport that also killed 13 American service members.

Ms. Baran recalled her first attempt to flee during those two weeks of panic: She got a call at 4:30 a.m. one day telling her that her contacts had secured her a spot on a flight, and to leave immediately. She and her mother joined the crowds rushing toward the airport, trudging on a dusty, circuitous path, but they had to turn back when shots were fired.

“I felt totally hopeless,” Ms. Baran said. “I thought, now I’m not sure I’ll see another plane in the sky.”

She would not leave Afghanistan for more than a month, as Ms. Hall and others tried to devise routes to safety. In the meantime, she married her longtime fiancé, Bahlool, a civil engineer, in early September, on her 27th birthday.

The chance for the newlyweds to escape came the next month. Ms. Hall texted Ms. Baran with instructions to go to Mazar-i-Sharif, many hours from Kabul. They could bring only a small bag each. Their final destination was unclear. Ms. Baran, her husband and her mother stayed at the home of a trusted network contact, using code words to make sure they were not being lured into a trap.

Two days later, they flew to Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. They would spend the next year and a half there in a refugee camp. During that time, the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York offered Ms. Baran a fellowship, keeping it open during the long wait for extensive security checks to be completed so that she could receive refugee status in the United States.

“Just keeping hope alive was important,” said Valbona Myteberi, the law school’s associate dean for graduate and international programs. Ms. Myteberi, who kept in close contact with Ms. Baran, had escaped violent unrest in Albania in the late 1990s.

Ms. Baran was finally able to travel in April 2023. Before her plane took off, from Doha, Qatar, she sent a Facebook message to Ms. Hall, writing, “I’m extremely excited and happy!!!”

Her main worry now is the bar exam, which she hopes to take at the end of July. She had to take law classes at Cardozo that focused on American law to sit for the test. She also had to file special paperwork, because she could not get copies of her transcripts from Afghanistan.

She is still adjusting to life in a foreign city without a significant Afghan community. Brooklyn Law School gave her a temporary apartment, and her husband found a job at a construction company. Her mother struggled with English at first, but is improving through regular classes. They have found some sense of community at an Ismaili mosque in Manhattan, and a permanent apartment of their own in Brooklyn. Ms. Baran is immeasurably grateful for the help she has received from Cardozo since getting to New York, from the stocked refrigerator upon arrival to frequent check-ins as the months went by.

“I always say I’m blessed,” Ms. Baran said. “Life is very difficult, but I have this very good support.”

She gets regular updates from relatives who are still in Afghanistan, where human rights group say women and girls are living under “gender apartheid.” She struggles with a sense of guilt at having left her country as the Taliban reimposed their rules barring women from public life, and as the country fell further into economic devastation and isolation.

The efforts that helped Ms. Baran escape have continued.

Hadley Rose Staley is the former executive director of Friends of the Public-Private Partnership for Justice Reform in Afghanistan, the Washington nonprofit that had supported Ms. Baran’s alumni association. The group raised about $250,000 for the evacuations. It is still trying to help Afghan lawyers who want to leave or are trying to establish themselves in new countries, since they are at “grave risk” because of their connections to the United States.

To Ms. Hall, now a deputy executive director of the Rule of Law Collaborative at the University of South Carolina, the young Afghans who had taken risks and organized their lives with the goal of a better future in their country exemplify the tragedy of the Taliban’s return to power.

“Reformers, scientists, doctors, professors, all of the educated women who were doing so much work for human rights, that their voices, all that talent is now just silenced,” she said. “And the fact that there are Afghan women like Nargis who made it here and can use their voices, it’s a spot of joy in a very sad story.”