Afghan's president, Ashraf Ghani, welcomed back Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed "Afghan Girl" on Wednesday, offering her a furnished apartment after she was deported by Pakistan.
Her photo in the 1985 edition of National Geographic magazine became a symbol of her country's wars.
Pakistan security officials escorted Gula overnight from a Peshawar hospital, where she had been staying since her arrest last month for living illegally in Pakistan, and handed her over to Afghan authorities at the Torkham border.
Gula's deportation comes amid Pakistani pressure to send 2.5 million Afghan refugees back home even though Afghanistan is facing a bloody Taliban insurgency and would struggle to look after so many returnees.
“I welcome her back to the bosom of her motherland,” President Ashraf Ghani said with an expressionless Gula standing beside him during a small welcome-back ceremony at the palace in Kabul.
"I've said repeatedly, and I like to repeat it again, that our country is incomplete until we absorb all of our refugees."
Ghani promised to provide Gula with a furnished apartment to ensure she "lives with dignity and security in her homeland".
Gula did not comment during the ceremony, which her children also attended.
Gula had been living in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar for years with her children and husband, who died five years ago.
(Article has been edited for length.)
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