Sharbat Gula (Pashto: شربت ګله; born c. 1972) is an Afghan woman who became internationally recognized as the subject in Afghan Girl, a 1984 portrait taken by American photojournalist Steve McCurry that was later published as the cover photograph for the June 1985 issue of National Geographic. The portrait was shot at Nasir Bagh, Pakistan, while Gula was residing there as an Afghan refugee fleeing the Soviet–Afghan War. Despite the photograph's high global recognition, Gula's identity remained unknown until 2002, when her whereabouts were verified and she was photographed for the second time in her life. Having lived and raised a family in Pakistan for 35 years, Gula was arrested by Pakistani authorities in 2016 and subsequently deported to Afghanistan in 2017 on the charge of possessing forged identity documents. However, in November 2021, Gula was granted asylum in Italy, three months after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Gula was born around 1972 into a Pashtun family. In the early 1980s, her village was attacked by Soviet helicopters and it was initially reported that during the attacks her parents were killed. Her sisters, brothers and grandmother moved to Pakistan to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp on the border with Afghanistan. However, Gula corrected the earlier reports, stating that her mother died of appendicitis and that her father was alive when they moved to Pakistan.

In 1984, National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry travelled to Afghanistan to document the effects of the war, visiting refugee camps, many of which were on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Whilst there, McCurry took what was to become one of the most iconic cover photographs for National Geographic. While Gula was attending school at the refugee camp in Pakistan, McCurry photographed her and other girls. It was later alleged that McCurry did not obtain permission to take the images, which contradict Pashtun culture, where women should not show their faces to men outside the family.

Initially, the magazine's editor did not want to use the image, but eventually gave in, publishing a cover image which was simply called Afghan Girl. It was the June 1985 issue, well after the picture had been taken. The photo, which shows a girl with a striking green eye colour, looking straight into the lens with a piercing stare, became a symbol of the Afghan conflict and the problems affecting refugees around the world.

The image is the only one to have been used three times on a National Geographic cover. (The first was June 1985. The second time came after she had been identified, seventeen years later, in the April 2002 issue. The third came in 2013, in an issue titled "The Photo Issue", on the occasion of National Geographic's 125th anniversary.)

Gula was the subject of a television documentary, Search for the Afghan Girl, that aired in March 2002.

In a 2022 interview with La Repubblica, Sharbat Gula shared her feelings on the photo: "That photo created a lot of problems for me ... I would have preferred it had never been taken. I remember that day well, that photographer who arrived at the Nasir Bagh camp school. I was a child. I didn't like photos. In Afghan culture women do not appear in photos. But there wasn't much choice".

In the mid-1980s, she was married to baker Rahmat Gula when she was aged 13, and returned to Afghanistan in 1992. As of 2002, Gula had three daughters, Robin, Zahid and Alyan – her fourth daughter died shortly after birth. She later had a son. Her husband died from hepatitis C around 2012. She expressed hopes that her children will be able to gain an education.