Iconic ‘Afghan Girl’ sent back home

Sharbat Gula, was handed over to Afghan security personnel at the Torkham border after she refused the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government’s offer to stay in Pakistan, Dawn reported. Only a few days ago, authorities temporarily halted her deportation for using fake ID cards to stay in Pakistan.

Gula, who was immortalised after her haunting picture taken at a refugee camp in Pakistan in 1985 was carried by the magazine on its cover and became a symbol of her country’s wars, was arrested last week from her home here. She and the Afghan government, in an application submitted to the provincial government, pleaded to allow her to leave Pakistan on completion of her 15-day sentence. 

The decision of stopping her deportation was taken on Saturday by the provincial government on humanitarian grounds and as a goodwill gesture towards Afghanistan. However, she 

refused to stay in Pakistan. Gula, who was 12-years old when her image appeared on the cover, and who was dubbed as ‘Mona Lisa of Afghan war’, was arrested by the FIA for alleged forgery of a Pakistani Computerised National Identity Card (CNIC). 

A special anti-corruption and immigration court here ordered Gula’s deportation to Afghanistan on Friday after serving a 15-day jail sentence besides slapping a fine of  Rs 1,10,000 ($ 1,100). The spokesperson for the provincial government Mushtaq Ghani had said that directives not to deport Gula for the time being had been forwarded to the Home and Tribal Affairs department, adding that the case needed to be taken up at the federal level. 

According to interim charge sheet submitted on November 1, the prosecutor said that she accepted the main charge of faking her identity to get the CNIC. Gula said that her late husband, Rehmat Gul, had earlier made a manual national identity card in 1988, which was used to get the CNIC with the help of an agent who was bribed. 

Pakistan has been tackling the Afghan refugee crisis for over three decades. An estimated three million Afghan refugees are living in Pakistan.