The many faces and stories of children in war
From the ‘Afghan Girl’ to ‘The Boy on the Ambulance’, their struggle doesn’t end as adults.
The so-called Afghan Girl photo that became one of the most iconic covers of the National Geographic is one of the many photos that document children in conflict areas.
It was 1985 and the girl on the photo is Sharbat Gula — at the time she was 12 years old and a refugee in a camp in Pakistan. Her parents were killed during the Soviet Union’s bombing of Afghanistan when she was around six years old.
Fast forward over 30 years, Gula is still a refugee and, as reported here on Medium by Adrienne Mahsa Varkiani, Associate Editor at ThinkProgress, she was recently arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan for allegedly forged identity paper, and sentenced to deportation.
Steve McCurry, the photographer who took the famous photo, followed the developments very closely and recently announced on Instagram that “the Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan has taken an interest in Sharbat Gula’s case.”
Gula was officially welcomed back to Afghanistan last week by president Ashraf Ghani and will soon travel to Bangalore, India “for medical treatment” for Hepatitis C, as reported by Oneworldnews.
Gula has been the symbol of refugees for decades. Now she has become the face of unwanted migrants.
Gula’s iconic photo portrays the tragic stories of millions of refugee children around the world. Many have been forced to flee their countries; many without their parents and families.
In McCurry’s own words:
Sharbat Gula has been the symbol of refugees for decades. Now she has become the face of unwanted migrants.
As mentioned in the September edition of my Digital Diplomacy on Medium, Panos Navrozidis, Greece country director for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), has recently bylined a post on the official Medium channel of the IRC to discuss the 1 year anniversary of Alan Kurdi’s tragic death, ahead of the United Nations summit on migrants and refugees on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
The photo of the 3-year-old Syrian refugee, whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach, became the symbol of the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean sea.
And more recently, the photo of 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh covered in dust and blood captured the world’s attention and made the front page of every newspaper and went viral online. The photo of the Syrian boy — The Boy in the Ambulance as many remember him — was taken after he was pulled from the rubble after airstrikes in Aleppo.
“The fact that this picture went viral gives me hope that it will galvanize attention around Aleppo and ignite a new kind of conversation about what is happening in Syria,” Caroline Vent of UKUN_NewYork wrote in a recent post.
And another war-related image of a child, the iconic 1972 photo of a naked, screaming 9-year-old girl after a napalm attack in Vietnam — a Pulitzer Prize-winning image by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut — has gone recently viral on social media after Facebook removed and then reinstated the photo shared by Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg.
Facebook’s statement: In this case, we recognize the history and global importance of this image in documenting a particular moment in time. Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed.
The girl was Kim Phuc, now an adult. Last year, more than 40 years later, Kim had a new chance to heal and underwent laser treatment. And by her side, the man who took the iconic photo.
