Afghan Girl

Afghan Girl is a 1984 photographic portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet–Afghan War. The photograph, taken by American photojournalist Steve McCurry near the Pakistani city of Peshawar, appeared on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic. While the portrait's subject initially remained unknown, she was identified by early 2002: Gula, an ethnic Pashtun from Afghanistan's Nangarhar Province, was a 12-year-old child residing in Pakistan's Nasir Bagh.

In light of the Cold War, the portrait was described as the "First World's Third World Mona Lisa" in reference to the famous 16th-century portrait painting of the same name by Leonardo da Vinci. Gula's image became "emblematic" in some social circles as the "refugee girl/woman located in some distant camp" that was deserving of compassion from the Western viewer, and also as a symbol of Afghanistan to the West. CNN called it the 'world's most famous photograph'.

Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984. Her photograph was taken by National Geographic Society photographer Steve McCurry, on Kodachrome 64 colour slide film, with a Nikon FM2 camera and Nikkor 105mm Ai-S F2.5 lens. The pre-print retouching of the photograph was done by Graphic Art Service, based in Marietta, Georgia. McCurry did not record the name of the person he had photographed.

The photograph, entitled 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 her eyes staring directly into the camera, was named "the most recognized photograph" in the magazine's history, and the cover is one of National Geographic's best known. American Photo magazine says the image has an "unusual combination of grittiness and glamour". Gula's green eyes have been the subject of much commentary.

McCurry made several unsuccessful attempts during the 1990s to find and identify the subject of the photograph. In January 2002, a National Geographic team traveled to Afghanistan to find her. Upon learning that the Nasir Bagh refugee camp was soon to close, McCurry inquired of its remaining residents, one of whom knew Gula's brother and was able to send word to her hometown. Several women falsely identified themselves as the Afghan Girl. In addition, after being shown the 1984 photograph, several young men erroneously identified her as their wife.

The team found Gula, then around age 30, in a remote region of Afghanistan; she had returned to her native country from the refugee camp in 1992. Her identity was confirmed by John Daugman using iris recognition. She recalled being photographed. She had been photographed on only three occasions: in 1984 and during the search for her when a National Geographic producer took the identifying photographs that led to the reunion with McCurry. She had never seen Afghan Girl until it was shown to her in 2002.

A devout Muslim, Gula normally wears a burqa and was hesitant to meet McCurry, as he was a male from outside the family. After finding Gula, National Geographic covered the costs of medical treatment for her family and a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Pashtun by ethnicity and from a rural background, Gula's family fled their village in eastern Nangarhar during the Soviet Union's bombing of Afghanistan when she was around six years old. Along with her father, brother, and three sisters, she walked across the mountains to Pakistan to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984 where she was photographed.