Photographer of Nat Geo’s green-eyed Afghan girl extends support

Steve McCurry, who photographed the famous ‘Afghan girl’ portrait on a National Geographic cover in 1984, has extended support to her after she was arrested in Peshawar.

“I am committed to doing anything and everything possible to provide legal and financial support for her and her family,” he said.

McCurry who shot Shaerbat Gula at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp near Peshawar in 1984 when she was about 12-years-old, further said, “I object to this action by the authorities in the strongest possible terms. She has suffered throughout her entire life, and her arrest is an egregious violation of her human rights.”

McCurry later tracked her down, after a 17-year search, to a remote Afghan village in 2002 where she was married to a baker, named Rahmat Gul, and the mother of three daughters.

A special team of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested Gula, now 46, from Nauthia, the old quarters of Peshawar, following a two-year investigation on her and her husband, who has absconded.

The team also recovered a fraudulently acquired Pakistani computerised national identity card (CNIC) and an Afghan identity card from her possession. Investigators, who have uncovered thousands of fraud cases over the last decade, launched a probe into her application shortly after she procured the CNIC.

According to the FIR, the CNIC identifies her as Sharbat Bibi, a resident of Talab Road, Nauthia Qadeem, Mohalla Mast Gul, Peshawar. Her date of birth is mentioned as 1-1-1969.

According to an official, the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA) was alerted by Gula’s striking resemblance with the NatGeo girl. In subsequent investigation it transpired that NADRA had issued a CNIC to the same Afghan woman, who had shed her burqa but didn’t change her first name.