Pakistan to deport National Geographic 'Afghan girl'

Peshawar : The Afghan woman immortalised on a National Geographic cover says she is "heartbroken" at news she will be deported from Pakistan to the war-torn homeland she first fled decades ago.

Sharbat Gula, whose blazing green eyes were captured in an image taken in a Pakistan refugee camp in the 1980s that became the magazine's most famous cover in history, spoke to AFP from a hospital bed in Peshawar, where she is being treated for Hepatitis C.

"Afghanistan is only my birthplace, but Pakistan was my homeland and I always considered it as my own country," she said.

"I had decided to live and die in Pakistan but they did the worst thing with me. It's not my fault that I born there (in Afghanistan). I am dejected. I have no other option but to leave."

Gula, who says she is now 45, was arrested last week and accused of living in Pakistan on fraudulent identity papers following a two-year investigation. She is one of thousands of refugees using fake ID cards to seek safe haven from the violence roiling their own country. 

The illiterate mother-of-four pleaded guilty to the charges in court Friday, her lawyer Mubashar Nazar told AFP.

She was sentenced to 15 days imprisonment, after which she will be deported in a decision slammed by Amnesty International as a "grave injustice".

"She has already spent 11 days in jail," Nazar said, meaning she could be freed as early as Monday.  

An Afghan consulate official said that a 110,000 Pakistani rupee ($1,050) fine also imposed on Gula has already been paid.

"We... will take her to Afghanistan in an honourable way on Monday," Abdul Hameed Jalili, counsellor for refugees at the Afghan consulate in Peshawar, told AFP.

"For decades, she was known as the world's most famous refugee and seen as a symbol of Pakistan's status as a generous host," said Champa Patel, Amnesty International's South Asia Director.

"Now, by sending her back to a country she hasn't seen in a generation and her children have never known, her plight has become emblematic of Pakistan's cruel treatment of Afghan refugees."