KABUL, Afghanistan — Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed Afghan woman whose photograph as a young refugee girl was published on the cover of National Geographic magazine three decades ago, received a warm welcome on Wednesday from Afghanistan’s president after she was deported from Pakistan.

Long the face of Afghanistan’s millions of refugees abroad, Ms. Gula, now 44 and the mother of several children, has become the most public example of what has become, in effect, the forced return of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees and migrants from Pakistan, as well as Iran and Europe.

Ms. Gula was arrested by the Pakistani authorities two weeks ago on charges of obtaining false identity documents, a common practice among Afghans in Pakistan, who have been subjected to roundups and arbitrary arrests in efforts to force them to return to Afghanistan.