Taliban sweep of Afghanistan spark fears of refugee crisis

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : 'Once in Iran, the migrants board another vehicle and again speed through the Iranian desert, usually to the city of Kerman where the smugglers have guest houses.
51% : From there, the migrants are taken to Tehran when the coast is clear of guards.
51% : Speaking to the MailOnline by phone from Zaranj, one smuggler said: 'I and my team here used to send around 50 or even fewer people to Iran on our pickup trucks each day for years
51% : One migrant who spoke to MailOnline before leaving Afghanistan for Iran told us his final destination was Italy.
50% : The third and most-common route goes via Pakistan to Iran - it is the cheapest, but has the largest chance of capture
49% : A second route goes from Zaranj directly into a Iran and to a safehouse in Kerman, before a final journey to Tehran.
49% : before reaching Iran, the people will have to walk for 3 hours, until they pass a deep ditch that the Iranians dug to mark the border.
46% : A second route goes south to Zaranj before the crossing into Iran, to a safehouse in Kerman.
45% : One smuggler, speaking to MailOnline, said that on a 'good day' he takes now 150 people across the border to Tehran compared to 50 in recent years - with many hoping to escape Iran into Turkey and then onwards to Europe and the UK, where they intend to claim asylum.
44% : The third route - the cheapest and most commonly used - goes into Iran via Pakistan, then to Kerman and Tehran.
42% : But an estimated 500 to 2,000 Afghans a day are now crossing Iran and entering Turkey to join the 4m or so mostly Syrian refugees on Europe's eastern flank.
41% : Smugglers in the city of Zaranj - a border crossing between Afghanistan and Iran that was captured by the Taliban last week - say the number of people looking to leave the country has trebled in recent months amid fears the Islamists will soon retake power.
41% : One of the main escape routes for those fleeing the Taliban is westwards into Iran, where around 1m Afghan refugees are already given shelter, following the last 40 years of turbulence in their country.
37% : The UN says just 200 crossed the border into Iran on the weekend just gone, but only counts those who are officially registered as refugees.
36% : The most direct, expensive, and dangerous route goes from there to Tehran via a crossing at Kohsan where migrants have to swim a deadly river, but stand the least chance of getting caught.
36% : 'But I know through talking with many of them that their final destination is not Iran.
34% : Most migrants make their way to the smuggling hub of Herat - which has come under attack by the Taliban in recent days - before they are either taken north to the Khosan border crossing with Iran, or south to Zaranj - which has also fallen into Taliban hands.
34% : But the perilous 1,500 mile journey across Iran holds its own dangers for the refugees as they must negotiate mountain ranges and canyons as they head west.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.