The famous Afghan with green eyes, immortalized more than 30 years ago on the cover of National Geographic magazine, was evacuated to Italy after the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, Rome announced Thursday (November 25th).
Read alsoSharbat Gula, the Afghan girl from
National Geographic
threatened with prison
"
Afghan national Sharbat Gula arrived in Rome
" after the Italian government "
facilitated and organized her transfer,
" said an official statement. Sharbat Gula, a young woman with green eyes highlighted by a red scarf, rose to fame after the publication in 1985 of a photo taken the previous year in an Afghan refugee camp in Pakistan by photographer Steve McCurry. “
In the space of a few seconds, everything was perfect, the light, the background and the expression of his eyes,
” said McCurry in his book “
Inédit
”, released in France in 2013.
The illiterate mother of four says she arrived in Pakistan as an orphan, four or five years after the Soviet invasion of 1979, like millions of Afghans who fled the fighting across the border.
In 2016, she was returned to her country, as Pakistan at the time increased pressure on Afghan refugees to leave its territory.
To read also "The Afghan with green eyes" returned to her country
Italy, which was with the United States, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Germany, one of the five countries most involved in NATO's “
Resolute Support
”
mission
in Afghanistan, has evacuated thousands of Afghans from the country after the US withdrawal in August.
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