Steve McCurry
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Sharbat Gula speaks to Tolo TV hosts about her iconic National Geographic photograph, her family, and return to Afghanistan.
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- Habiba Syed
An Afghan woman made famous by a 1985 National Geographic cover talks exclusively to the BBC of her hopes for a new beginning. Sharbat Gula spoke to BBC Afgh...
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- BBC News
Nov 26, 2021 · Sharbat Gula, who became an international symbol of war-torn Afghanistan after her portrait at a refugee camp was published on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985, was evacuated...
Jul 26, 2015 · Sharbat Gula was around 12 years old when photographer Steve McCurry took her picture. "It was this piercing gaze," McCurry says. "A very beautiful little girl with this incredible look."
- Daniel Hajek
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- A Long Road Home
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More than 30 years after she became a refugee from her native Afghanistan, Sharbat Gula has been deeded a permanent house.
One of the world’s most famous refugees finally has a home. A big home.
Sharbat Gula, who became an instant icon when she peered out from the June 1985 cover of National Geographic magazine as a 12-year-old-refugee, is now the owner of a 3,000-square-foot residence decorated to her liking in the capital of her native Afghanistan.
The house is a gift from the Afghan government to Sharbat Gula, now 45, along with a roughly $700-per-month stipend for living expenses and medical treatment, according to Najeeb Nangyal, a spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Communication.
Sharbat Gula, known to much of the world simply as the "Afghan girl," received the keys to the home late last month in a ceremony led by Afghan government officials. It comes after three decades as a refugee in Pakistan and a tumultous last year back in Afghanistan.
Sharbat Gula’s piercing green eyes made her an instant icon. Orphaned at age six during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, she had trekked by foot to Pakistan with her siblings and grandmother. Photographer Steve McCurry’s picture of her made her the unwitting posterchild for the plight of thousands of Afghan refugees streaming into Pakistan. In her homeland she became known as the “Afghan Mona Lisa.”
Sharbat Gula was arrested late last year for using a forged Pakistani identity card—a common practice among the 1 million Afghan refugees who live in the country without legal status. She faced up to 14 years in prison and a $5,000 fine. (Read the news of her arrest.)
At the time, she was raising four children and was suffering from hepatitis C, which killed her husband years earlier.
“When Pakistan arrested her and accused her [of having a] fake Pakistan ID it became a national cause for Afghans and the Afghan government,” says Nangyal.
After being detained for two weeks Sharbat Gula was released and returned to Afghanistan with her children. “Afghanistan is only my birthplace, but Pakistan was my homeland and I always considered it as my own country,” she told AFP before leaving. “I am dejected. I have no other option but to leave.”
In 2016 alone, 370,000 registered refugees returned from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Tens of thousands more have been sent back to their homeland from Iran and Europe in recent years, often by coercion or deportation. An untold number of unregistered refugees—like Sharbat Gula—have returned as well.
“This woman is a symbol to Afghans and also a symbol to Pakistan,” says Heather Barr, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) who has worked in Afghanistan for 10 years. “The way she was parading in front of the media by Pakistan felt like humiliation of the Afghan government: Here is this woman who had to flee your country for ours. The Afghanistan government responded by ostentatiously welcoming her back. The message was: We can take care of our own people.”
The last 15 years have seen a flurry of media attention around Sharbat Gula. The identity of the “Afghan Girl” was unknown until 2002, when Steve McCurry, who first captured her image, tracked her down in the mountains of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. An FBI analyst, forensic sculptor and the inventor of iris recognition all verified her identity. She appeared again on the cover of National Geographic, one of the few people to be featured twice.
By then, Sharbat Gula was a married mother of three and had no idea that her face was recognized around the world. She told McCurry at the time that she hoped her daughters could have the education she never had.
Now they will. Her daughters are enrolled in school for the coming year, says Gul, and "they will compete their education, Inshallah."
The Afghan government is encouraging her to expand that dream. Nangyal, the spokesman, has suggested she launch a foundation to educate and empower women and children, particularly those being repatriated, and she is considering it. “My message to all my sisters is not to marry their daughters at a young age,” she told BBC Persia. “Let them complete their education the same as your sons do.”
But Sharbat Gula’s own daughters are returning to an Afghanistan that may offer worse prospects than their mother had more than 30 years ago. Today, only half of Afghan girls attend school, and the majority of those who do drop out between the ages of 12 to 15. In rural areas, the number of girls in school is now declining.
Human Rights Watch's Barr says that gender equality in Afghanistan lags behind Pakistan and Iran, which took in a combined six million Afghan refugees during the Soviet War. Women and girls returning to Afghanistan must adapt to having a male companion escort them out of the house or make decisions for them. Sometimes, she says, these returnees are “perceived as immoral or indecent” because they grew up abroad.
Mar 23, 2015 · The striking portrait of 12-year-old Sharbat Gula, a Pashtun orphan in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border, was taken in December 1984 and published the following year.
Jan 16, 2017 · An Afghan woman made famous by a 1985 National Geographic cover has spoken exclusively to the BBC of her hope for a new beginning, after being deported from Pakistan. Sharbat Gula now lives...
