National Geographic finds its Afghan girl

NATIONAL Geographic magazine has rediscovered the green-eyed "Afghan girl," a 12-year-old orphan whose haunting photograph made the cover of the magazine in June 1984.

The photograph of the girl with piercing eyes taken in a Afghan refugee camp became the most famous cover image in the magazine's history and triggered a 17-year search by photographer Steve McCurry to find her again.

The award-winning photographer led a National Geographic team that tracked her down in a remote Afghan village where she was identified as Sharbat Gula, now 30, married to a baker and the mother of three daughters. "I am 100 percent sure that Sharbat Gula is the Afghan girl I've been seeking for the past 17 years. Her eyes are as haunting now as they were then," said McCurry.

The magazine will feature a photo spread of Sharbat Gula in its April edition, capturing her in the same pose as 17 years ago, with her hair covered by a purple veil and her piercing eyes looking directly into the camera lens.

"Sharbat's story is a metaphor for all refugees," said William Allen, editor-in-chief of the magazine. "It is fitting she graces our cover once again and causes us to focus on the plight of people she has come to represent."

To establish that the woman and the 12-year-old orphan were the same person, National Geographic employed experts in the technology of iris recognition, said to be more accurate than fingerprints, as well as an FBI expert in facial recognition. The conclusions left no doubt that Sharbat Gula was indeed the orphan girl photographed by McCurry at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp over the border from Afghanistan in Pakistan in January 1984 during the Soviet-Afghan war.

"It was a moment of tremendous joy for me to see her again," said McCurry, of his reunion with her earlier this year. National Geographic has proclaimed the photo of Gula as "the most recognised photograph" in its 114-year history".

Twice in the 1990s McCurry went back to Afghanistan to search for her. When US troops moved into Afghanistan fighting the anti-terrorist war, McCurry went back again and found the village where she has lived as a traditional wife since leaving the refugee camp 10 years ago.

* A TV documetary on the search for the Afghan girl will be broadcast on the DStv's National Geographic channel at 22h00 on Monday. -- Sapa-AFP