Famous National Geographic cover star deported from Pakistan over fraudulent identity papers

‘Afghanistan is only my birthplace, but Pakistan was my homeland... I am dejected. I have no other option but to leave’

Sharbat Gula, the subject of Steve McCurry’s ‘Afghan Girl’, was on the cover of National Geographic in 1984 (Reuters)

An Afghan woman immortalised on the cover of National Geographic was deported by Pakistani officials on Wednesday to her war-torn homeland following a brief period of detention for using fraudulent identity papers.

Sharbat Gula, whose intense green eyes were captured in an image taken in a Pakistan refugee camp in 1984 by journalist Steve McCurry, was discharged from hospital where she was being treated for Hepatitis C and taken to the border overnight, officials said.

“We have deported Sharbat Gula to Afghanistan. She crossed the border to Afghanistan at around 2:30am. She was also accompanied by her four children,” Asmatullah Wazir, an administration official in the border town of Torkham told AFP.

Pakistani security officials escort Gula in Peshawar, Pakistan this morning (EPA)

A second official, requesting anonymity, confirmed the move and said Ms Gula, 45, was accompanied by officials from the Afghan embassy.

Speaking to AFP last week, Ms Gula said she was “heartbroken” at the prospect of returning.

“Afghanistan is only my birthplace, but Pakistan was my homeland and I always considered it as my own country,” she said.

“I had decided to live and die in Pakistan but they did the worst thing with me. It’s not my fault that I born there [in Afghanistan]. I am dejected. I have no other option but to leave.”

Ms Gula said she first arrived in Pakistan an orphan, some four or five years after the Soviet invasion of 1979, one of millions of Afghans who have sought refuge over the border since.

Since July hundreds of thousands have returned to Afghanistan in a desperate exodus, ahead of a March 2017 deadline for all Afghan refugees to leave Pakistan.

Last month the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said more than 350,000 Afghan refugees – documented and undocumented – had returned from Pakistan so far in 2016, adding it expected a further 446,000 to do so by the year’s end.

AFP