BESHUD, Afghanistan — The truck wound its way through mountain passes in the pre-dawn darkness, stacked high with the trappings of a refugee life pieced together over 30 years.

The Shah family had been forced out of the haven in Pakistan that their patriarch had found them during the last war, against the Soviets. Now they were returning to Afghanistan, a place in the grips of a newer and longer war that has sent hundreds of thousands fleeing.