Mohammed Daoud is the first to say he is on a mission. Like his 16 family members, and almost every other Afghan ensconced under the mulberry trees of Athens’ Victoria Square, his motto is “move, move, move”. “Our magnet is Germany,” he says, holding his three-month-old grandson in his arms. “We have no other choice. That is where we have to go.”

That Germany may have other ideas, and that other political manoeuvres may cut the journey short, is of little matter right now. “I have come with my entire family: six sons, six grandchildren, two daughter-in-laws, one son-in-law and my wife,” he says. “We travelled by plane to Iran, bus to Tehran, car to Turkey, on foot across the border and by boat to Lesbos. We are not going to give up now.”

With a determined glare, the 55-year-old Afghan army officer then reaches into his breast pocket and produces a bus ticket, the document he hopes will help take his family north.

‘Our magnet is Germany’ – Mohammed Daoud holding his three-month-old grandson. Photograph: Helena Smith

For Daoud, Victoria Square is hallowed ground but it is only another stop on an odyssey leading west. In recent days thousands like him have ended up in in Athens, unable to move on following Macedonia’s snap decision to close its borders to anyone not deemed to be from a conflict zone. By Tuesday over 11,000 migrants, the vast majority from Afghanistan, had become stranded in Greece, the entry point into Europe for more than 102,000 people fleeing the depredations of war and destitution in Asia, Africa and the Middle East in 2016 alone.

After Syrians, Afghans have accounted for the largest number of refugees and migrants who have poured into Greece. Victoria Square and the gritty streets that surround it are symbolic of the endeavour, hope and determination that has spurred the continent’s biggest migration of people since the second world war. “If you go to Iran, you’ll hear people speak about Victoria Square,” says Polis Pandelides, the head officer of the Salvation Army, which runs a day centre near the plaza. “Word has spread that, after the islands, this is the place to meet relatives, pick up money, buy bus tickets, that sort of thing.”

In recent months charities and NGOs have also converged on the square as the influx of migrants has grown. On Tuesday, Dutch volunteers appeared as the clock struck 3pm to hand out tea and coffee. Waif-like figures, mostly young men from Morocco and Algeria, rushed to grab the polystyrene cups. But Victoria Square, named after Britain’s long-reigning monarch, has also come to represent something else: a fear of the chaos and commotion that the stranded migrants have brought with them.

A baby wrapped in a jacket sleeps at Victoria Square. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

The backlog at Greece’s Macedonian border – eased when about 900 Afghans and Africans were put on buses back to Athens – has stirred deep-seated fears that thousands will remain trapped in a country that is itself on its knees. Labouring under its worst economic crisis in decades, with poverty and unemployment levels at record heights, Athens is ill-equipped to deal with the flow. On Tuesday, Greece’s leftist-led government criticised Austria for colluding with Balkan countries to its south in tightening restrictions after its defence minister appealed to Nato to deploy a task force to stop yet more from crossing the Aegean.

For Daoud and his family who made the perilous sea journey on Monday, such strictures are meaningless. “We waited a month in Turkey to get on that boat and we are not going back,” he says. “As an army officer I arrested and locked up a lot of Taliban. My entire family is at risk of being killed if we ever went back to Ghazni [his home town].”

‘You feel for them, these people with babies fleeing war’ – Afrodita Kotzai with husband Miri. Photograph: Helena Smith

For now Victoria Square will be his home – just as it will for the vast number stuck in a capital they never envisaged staying in.

“You feel for them, these people with babies fleeing war,” says Afrodita Kotzai, tears welling as she stands with her husband, Miri, outside their apartment near the square. The Albanian couple, like Poles before them, moved to the area in a wave of migration two decades ago. Now, like the Greeks around them, they too are fearful of what the future will bring. “A lot of residents are too scared to leave their homes,” she says. “If it goes on, if the numbers increase, it is a bomb that will explode.”