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National Geographic 'Afghan Girl' cover star faces jail for fraud

A green-eyed Afghan girl who became a cover star for National Geographic magazine as a 12-year-old has been arrested for living in Pakistan with forged identification papers.

The haunting image of Sharbat Gula was taken at a Pakistani refugee camp in 1984, and became the most famous photograph in the magazine's history.

She now faces up to 14 years in prison and a heavy fine for fraud following a two-year investigation in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Many Afghans take desperate measures to try and avoid being returned to their homeland, and Pakistan has been cracking down on undocumented foreigners.

Shahid Ilyas, an official of the National Database Registration Authority (NADRA), said Ms Gula had been arrested for obtaining a fake ID card.

Officials say she applied for a Pakistani identity card in Peshawar in April 2014, using the name Sharbat Bibi.

She was one of thousands of Afghan refugees who managed to dodge Pakistan's computerised system to get an identity card.

Authorities are looking for three NADRA officials who issued the identity card to Ms Gula.

Photographer Steve McCurry took the 1984 photograph, entitled Afghan Girl, when Ms Gula was a refugee during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

After a 17-year search, he tracked her down to a remote Afghan village in 2002 where she was married to a baker and the mother of three daughters.

Pakistan provides safe haven for millions of refugees who fled after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979.

Officials say NADRA has so far verified 91 million ID cards and detected nearly 70,000 cases of fraud.

The UN says more than 350,000 Afghan refugees have returned home from Pakistan this year, with the number of people crossing the border expected to continue.

But they face an uncertain future with Afghanistan still at war and already overwhelmed by large numbers of internally displaced people fleeing fighting and officials have warned of a humanitarian crisis.