Sharbat Gula, who became world famous in 1985 as ‘the Afghan girl’ with green eyes on the cover of the magazine National Geographic, has been evacuated from Afghanistan by Italy. She has been granted refugee status.
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The cabinet of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi reports that Italy has organized the evacuation of Sharbat Gula (49) after she asked for help to flee her country after the Taliban takeover. The woman is now in Rome and the Italian government will assist her in her integration in Italy.
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Gula rose to international fame as a 12-year-old Afghan refugee girl in 1985 after a photo of her with her piercing green eyes was published on the cover of the magazine National Geographic. War photographer Steve McCurry took the photo in a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. For a long time no one knew her name, only in 2002 she was tracked down.
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“She symbolized the vicissitudes and conflicts of the chapter in the history that Afghanistan and its people were going through at the time,” the Italian government said in a statement. “In the evacuations we carry out at the request of private individuals and at the request of aid organizations active in Afghanistan, we received Sharbat Gula’s request to help her flee the country. The prime minister then arranged her transfer to Italy.’
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In 2014, Sharbat Gula turned up in Pakistan, but she went into hiding when authorities accused her of a fake Pakistani ID card and ordered her to be deported. The woman was then flown to Kabul where the president hosted a reception for her at the presidential palace and handed her the keys to a new apartment.
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Italy is one of the western countries that evacuated hundreds of Afghans from the country after the departure of US troops and the takeover by the Taliban in August. The Netherlands is also evacuating Afghans, but that is not going smoothly. Have four families filed a lawsuit against the Dutch state. The family members demand that the Netherlands evacuate them from Afghanistan as soon as possible, according to their lawyer Barbara Wegelin.
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