Sharbat Gula's mug shot, taken Oct. 26 in Peshawar, Pakistan. (AFP/FIA)
Sharbat Gula's haunting green eyes were immortalized on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. You might have seen her while sitting at a dentist's office, or while bending over to pick up your mail, but whenever it was, it was hard to pull your eyes away. Her penetrating stare seemed to encompass the pain of Afghanistan's civil war, and the perseverance of the refugees who fled to Pakistan.
She was just 12 when she was photographed by Steve McCurry in a camp for displaced people in Peshawar, the biggest city along Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan. Now in her 40s, she is still in Peshawar, but as of this week, she is in police custody.
Pakistani immigration officials detained her on charges that she possessed a fake Pakistani national identification card. They had been investigating her for years, and last year Pakistani media published the picture attached to her allegedly fake identification card. As an Afghan national, she should not have been able to obtain such a card.
Gula's arduous life now has two famous photos as its bookends, the magazine cover and the mug shot. They tell a sad story of a woman at the mercy of war. When McCurry took her photo in 1984, Gula was not aware. She wouldn't know of her own international fame until 2002, when McCurry returned to Peshawar in search of her.

Photographer Steve McCurry poses next to his photos of Sharbat Gula, at the opening of the “Overwhelmed by Life” exhibition of his work at the Museum for Art and Trade in Hamburg, on June 27, 2013. (Ulrich Perrey/AFP/Getty Images)
Now, Gula is one of at least 1.5 million Afghan refugees who resides in Pakistan (some estimates are as high as 3 million), down from a onetime high of 5 million. The majority came during the country's civil war in the 1980s, which very nearly left the entire country in ruins.
Afghanistan has not emerged from constant strife since and continues to be a major source of refugees, although many try to reach Europe instead of the overcrowded camps in Pakistan. Last year, 250,000 Afghan refugees in Pakistan actually returned home, according to the United Nations. Many were seeing their “home country” for the first time; as many as three-quarters were born in Pakistan.
[Afghan refugees have settled in Pakistan for decades. Now they’re being ordered to leave.]