The "Afghan Girl," who appeared on the cover of a National Geographic magazine in 1985, was granted refugee status by the Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi. Sharbat Gula was 12 years old at the time, a Pashtun orphan living in a refugee camp along the border. She arrived in Italy on November 25, now in her 40s. Because of her penetrating green gaze on the magazine cover, "Sharbat Gula acquired global notoriety, to the point of symbolizing the vicissitudes and conflicts of the phase history that Afghanistan and its people were going through," said a statement from the Prime Minister's office.
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