National Geographic journalists explain how they tracked down one of the magazine's most iconic cover stars -- the "Afghan Girl" -- 15 years after she first drew the world's attention to the plight of Afghani refugees.
article-article-bodyNational Geographic journalists explain how they tracked down one of the magazine’s most iconic cover stars — the “Afghan Girl” — 15 years later after she first drew the world’s attention to the plight of Afghani refugees.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK6EnFu3NHc[/youtube]
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http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/enlarge/afghan-girl-before-after_pod_image.html
I thought she was a descendant victim of white slavery under the Ottomans at first, but “racially, Pashtun people are classified as Caucasians: from Mediterranean race with Nordic mixture. Their Pashto language is classified under the Eastern Iranian sub-branch of the Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages. As a result, Pashtuns are often refered to as a group of the Iranian peoples,[26][59] possibly as partial descendants of the Bactrians and Scythians.[60]
Early precursors to the Pashtuns were Old Iranian tribes that spread throughout the eastern Iranian plateau.[61][62] According to academic Yu. V. Gankovsky, the Pashtuns began as a “union of largely East-Iranian tribes which became the initial ethnic stratum of the Pashtun ethnogenesis, dates from the middle of the first millennium CE and is connected with the dissolution of the Epthalite (White Huns) confederacy.”[63] Gankovsky proposes Kushan-o-Ephthalite origin for Pashtuns.[63]”
Is it just me?
Or is this whole clip of a frenzied celebrity hunt for an unsuspecting girl/woman just a bit icky?
An Afghan girl’s face/privacy is stolen and splattered across the globe via National Geographic. Then, years later, they pull the same stunt again.
Perhaps she was thrilled by all the attention.
Perhaps she secretly longed to be a vogue model and travel the world.
Perhaps she longed to live in America….
But I saw no evidence of that in the footage they showed here.
Then again, perhaps money changed hands and her husband and/or brother persuaded her to pose for the camera again.
Perhaps photo journalism is no different to chequebook journalism.
Perhaps I’m being a bit precious. But it still feels wrong.
She’s only been photographed twice in her life, the first image, and when the photographer caught up again. She was not at all aware of the original being used in publications around the world. Looks to be leading a pretty traditional life, not aware or interested in vogue magazine or the ‘western world’ at all. The linked wiki article pretty well sums it up.
I think the intent of the original pic was to ‘humanise’ a people being attacked by the nasty Soviets — ‘look, she’s almost white like us!’ , except that then the US turned on them later, having armed and trained them earlier, in the modern version of ‘the Great Game’ where Caspian Sea oil resources are now at stake, a much greater prize than the old Russian-British enmity.
Sean
There is much more to the Pashtuns than meets the eye or the mouth.
They are a much wrongly vilified people, who have been marked and targeted by the world’s power elite for destruction due to their Israelite heritage. Yes, they are the lawful decendents of the Lost Tribes of Israel.