Italy has given safe haven to the green-eyed “Afghan girl” Sharbat Gula, whose 1985 photo became a symbol of her country’s wars in National Geographic, Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s office said on Thursday. The government intervened after Gula asked for help to leave. Afghanistan After the Taliban took over the country in August, a statement said their arrival was part of a wider program to evacuate and integrate Afghan civilians. “The Afghan citizen Sharbat Gula has arrived in Rome,” it said in a statement, without giving a specific date.
American photographer Steve McCurry photographed Gula, who lives in a refugee camp on the Pakistan-Afghan border, when she was young.
Her staggering green eyes, gleaming from a scarf with a mix of cruelty and pain, earned her international recognition, but she was recognized only in 2002 when McCurry returned to the area and tracked her down.
An FBI analyst, forensic sculptor and inventor of iris recognition confirmed his identity, National Geographic said at the time. Gula said she reached an orphaned Pakistan for the first time nearly four or five years after the 1979 Soviet invasion, one of the millions of Afghans who have taken refuge on the border since then.
In 2016, Pakistan arrested Gula and deported him back to Afghanistan on charges of forging a national identity card in an attempt to stay in the country.
The then Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, welcomed her and promised her an apartment to ensure that she “lives with honor and security in her homeland”.
Since seizing power, Taliban leaders have said they will respect women’s rights according to Sharia or Islamic law. But under the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, women could not work and girls were banned from going to school. When leaving home, women had to cover their faces and be accompanied by a male relative.
In early September, Rome said it had evacuated about 5,000 Afghans from Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power in August. Italy said earlier this month that it had granted citizenship to Maria Bashir, Afghanistan’s first female chief prosecutor, when she arrived in the European country on September 9.
(with inputs from agencies)
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