Afghan Girl

About the Image

Steve McCurry is one of the greatest documentary photographers in history. Even so, I doubt even he realised how iconic his image of Sharbat Gula would turn out to be.

Taken in 1984, Gula was in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan, having fled the war zone created by Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Aged just 12 years old at the time of the photograph, Gula and her family had already been in the camp for five or 6 years. Such was her experience, that she later said that she considered Pakistan to be her home, and Afghanistan merely the country of her birth.

McCurry took many photos in the camp, including the informal school in which Gula and others were studying. She was the last image of the day, and McCurry knew it was the one that would be important. Gula was shy, and very uncertain about having her picture taken for a number of reasons. She was Pashtun, by ethnicity, a particularly fierce Afghan tribal people with firm religious beliefs. That Gula was showing her full face to a man outside her family and allowing him to take her picture was forbidden, and she later remembered feeling very angry about it afterwards. It also put her in danger for the rest of her life.

Her name was never asked for and never given. For almost 18 years, following the publication of the image on the front cover of National Geographic Magazine in June 1985, Sharbat Gula was just “Afghan Girl”. Eventually, in 2002, National Geographic put a team together to help Steve McCurry track the girl down. They asked around the last remaining residents of the Nasir Bagh camp, several of whom claimed to know the girl. After several false alarms, a man who claimed to have grown up in the camp with Gula said she had moved back to Afghanistan sometime around 1992. Crucially, he also knew where she now lived, and offered to go and bring her to the camp.

When the now 30 year old Sharbat Gula walked into the room where McCurry waited, he knew he’d found the Afghan Girl. This was confirmed by independent iris recognition and other distinguishing features.

Sharbat Gula had never seen the photograph, and had no idea that her face was famous around the world. She didn’t even know the image existed beyond remembering it being taken. She still had grave uncertainties about the photograph, and the dangers it brought. At the time, Gula was living just across the Afghanistan/Pakistan border in a small village in the hills. Her husband continued to work in Peshawar, as jobs are so few in Afghanistan, and Gula joined him in the cooler winter months. This proved to be her undoing. In 2016, she was arrested in Pakistan for having false papers, and paraded by the authorities, who found out who she was.

Deportation to Afghanistan followed, where she was welcomed by the then government, and given a home and monthly allowance. But, as the Taliban started to regain control and many prominent women were threatened or imprisoned, Sharbat Gula was evacuated to Sicily in 2021 with the help of the Italian government. Even today, the exact location of Gula’s whereabouts remain a closely guarded secret.

McCurry acknowledges “Afghan Girl” as an era defining image. For him, the image focuses the eyes of the world on the plight of refugees fleeing war zones or other disasters. Although Gula objects to the image on a basic and very personal level, there is no denying the impact it has had in the past 40 years.