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Sharbat Gula (Pashto: شربت ګله, literally "Rose Sherbet") (Sharbat is pronounced [ˈʃaɾbat]) (born ca. 1972) is an Afghanwoman of Pashtun ethnicity. She was forced to leave her home in Afghanistan during the Soviet war for a refugee camp in Pakistan where she was photographed by journalist Steve McCurry. The image brought her recognition when it was featured on the cover of the June 1985 issue of National Geographic Magazine, at a time when she was approximately 12 years old. Gula was known throughout the world simply as the Afghan Girl until she was formally identified in early 2002.
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[edit]Photo's subject
Gula was orphaned during the Soviet Union's bombing of Afghanistan and sent to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistanin 1984. Her village was attacked by Soviet helicopter gunships sometime in the early 1980s. The Soviet strike killed her parents - forcing her, her siblings and grandmother to hike over the mountains to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan.[1]
She married Rahmat Gul in the late 1980s and returned to Afghanistan in 1992. Gula had three daughters: Robina, Zahida, and Alia. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Gula has expressed the hope that her girls will receive the education she was never able to complete.
[edit]1984 photograph
At the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984, Gula's photograph was taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurryon Kodachrome color slide film. Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image.
Although her name was not known, her picture, titled "Afghan Girl", appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. The image of her face, with a red scarf draped loosely over her head and with her piercing sea-green eyesstaring directly into the camera, became a symbol both of the 1980s Afghan conflict and of the refugee situation worldwide. The image itself was named "the most recognized photograph" in the history of the magazine.[2]
[edit]Search for the Afghan Girl
The identity of the Afghan Girl remained unknown for over 17 years; Afghanistan remained largely closed to Western mediauntil after the removal of the Taliban government by foreign troops and local allies in 2001. Although McCurry made several attempts during the 1990s to locate her, he was unsuccessful.
In January 2002, a National Geographic team traveled to Afghanistan to locate the subject of the now-famous photograph. McCurry, upon learning that the Nasir Bagh refugee camp was soon to close, inquired of its remaining residents, one of whom knew Gula's brother and was able to send word to her hometown. However, there were a number of women who came forward and identified themselves erroneously as the famous Afghan Girl. In addition, after being shown the 1985 photo, a handful of young men questioned falsely claimed Gula as their wife.
The team finally located Gula, then around the age of 30, in a remote region of Afghanistan; she had returned to her native country from the refugee camp in 1992. Her identity was confirmed using biometric technology which matched her iris patterns to those of the photograph with almost full certainty. She vividly recalled being photographed—it was the first and only time she had ever had her picture taken. The fame and symbolic character of her portrait were completely unknown to her.
Modern pictures of her were featured as part of a cover story on her life in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic and was the subject of a television documentary, entitled Search for the Afghan Girl, which aired in March 2002. In recognition of her,[3] National Geographic set up the Afghan Girls Fund, a charitable organization with the goal of educating Afghan girls and young women.[4] In 2008, the scope of the fund was broadened to include boys and the name was changed to Afghan Children's Fund.[5]
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