The famous green-eyed Afghan subject of Steve McCurry’s 1985 photograph was arrested by Pakistani authorities Wednesday on charges of buying fake national identity papers.
Sharbat Gula was famously featured on the cover of National Geographic in 1985, and became a human symbol of Russia’s 1980 invasion of Afghanistan.
The Afghan woman in the famed National Geographic photo is arrested in Pakistan https://t.co/AL8LVE97N8
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 27, 2016
“We raided the house and picked her up,” a Pakistani Federal Investigation Authority official told The New York Times. “It took us a while to collect all the evidence against her, and the officials involved in helping her and her two sons get Pakistani national identity cards.”
Gula reportedly faces up to 14 years in prison as Pakistan continues to crack down on illegal Afghan refugees. The United Nations estimates nearly 1.6 million Afghan refugees live in northwest Pakistan, while some fled as long ago as 1979.
Gula allegedly bought her fake identity papers in 1988, and used them to get a 2014 Pakistani passport, which she used to travel to Saudi Arabia in 2014 on a religious pilgrimage.
National Geographic tracked down Gula in 2002 and found that she had returned to her village in Afghanistan during a lull in the fighting in the 1990s, but was forced to return to a refugee camp in Peshawar.
When McCurry saw her again in 2002, he wrote “Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened.”
“I wanted to finish school but could not. I was sorry when I had to leave,” she lamented at the time. She now faces up to 14 years in prison and a $3,000-$5,000 fine.
“She has suffered throughout her entire life, and we believe that her arrest is an egregious violation of her human rights,” Mccury said after he learned of her arrest.
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