Who is the Afghan girl

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A. Her name is Sharbat Gula - and she's just been found after a long and complicated search.< xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� And she's famous

A.� Yes - but she didn't know it. Her image was captured by Steve McCurry, a photographer for National Geographic magazine in 1984. The Afghan orphan refugee's piercing green eyes, staring from the magazine's cover, mesmerised the world. Her image became an icon of the suffering of refugees everywhere.

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Q.� Where was the shot taken

A.� In the Nasir Bagh refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. She was a Pashtun aged between 12 and 14. The year before she had trekked to the camp with her family as they fled the Soviets who killed their parents in their native village.

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But after her picture was published in 1985, the girl disappeared - until January this year, when a National Geographic team returned to the refugee camp in Pakistan.

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Q.� How did they find her

A.� Initially, there was a problem. The team thought they had found the right woman, but she had brown eyes. She said he colouring had changed over years of suffering. But her story didn't somehow seem right. She was an imposter.

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Then another clue came. Through a series of contacts, the real green-eyed girl was identified as Sharbat Gula, married and living in a remote region of Afghanistan with her family.

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It took time to persuade her to talk. As an Afghan woman who had lived beneath the burqa, speaking to men strangers was not only unusual, it was also sinful.

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Q.� So it really was her

A.� Yes - and her eyes were the key to the truth. In Afghanistan there are no birth certificates. More than two decades of war has meant that nearly all official records have been destroyed.

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�A complicated scientific process, using iris recognition software, was used. Comparison of a new photograph with the original image confirmed that this was the original green-eyed�Afghan girl.

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Q.� Did she have a story to tell

A.� She remembered McCurry. It was the first - and last - time she had her picture taken. She also recalled worrying that her red shawl had holes in it where she had scorched it from getting too near the fire when cooking. Sharbat also told McCurry she hoped her children would get a better education now that the Taliban had been defeated.

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Her brother, Kashar Khan, said: 'We left Afghanistan because of the fighting. The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice. You never knew when the planes would come. We hid in caves.'

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Q.� It must have been a moving experience for Steve McCurry

A.� He said: 'Her eyes are as haunting now as they were then. This portrait summed up for me the trauma and plight, and the whole situation of suddenly having to flee your home and end up in refugee camp, hundreds of miles away.

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'I don't a think a week has gone by in those years that I still don't get requests from people, trying to get information on her.'

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Steve Cunningham