Angelina Jolie Pens an Op-Ed in "TIME" That Spotlights the Crisis in Afghanistan

Angelina Jolie has joined Instagram, using the social media platform to amplify the voices of the people in Afghanistan, especially women and children, after their country was taken over by the Taliban. 

“I’ve come on Instagram to share their stories and the voices of those across the globe who are fighting for their basic human rights,” she writes in the caption of her inaugural post, a letter from an Afghan girl. “I live in Afghanistan,” the girl in the letter wrote.

“Before Taliban came in, we all went to work, school, [redacted] properly. We all had rights, we was [sic] able to defend our rights freely, but when they came, we are all afraid of them, and we think all our dreams are gone.” 

Before signing off, Jolie ended her post with: “Like others who are committed, I will not turn away. I will continue to look for ways to help. And I hope you’ll join me.”

The same day, TIME Magazine also published a piece by Jolie, which sheds light on the current situation in Afghanistan, which many analysts believe will be a return to the country’s “pre-9/11 days of fundamentalism, oppression and fanatical misogyny,” writes Jill Filipovic of CNN, in an op-ed that contextualizes the situation further. 

In her piece, Jolie underscored the plight of Afghan women and girls, writing: “I think of every Afghan girl who picked up her bookbag and went to school in the last twenty years even though she risked being killed for it—as so many were. In one district in Kabul, more than a hundred people have been killed in attacks targeting school girls in the last year alone.”

“I think of the Afghan women who served as lawyers and judges and police officers,” she continued, “even as their female friends and colleagues were murdered in cold blood, with the number of assassinations tripling in 2020.”

The situation in Afghanistan is especially dire for women and girls, because of the way they are viewed and treated, borne out of the ‘fanatical misogyny’ Filipovic has described. “One thing is different now,” she added. “Afghanistan's women tasted freedom in the last 20 years, and took it upon themselves to rebuild their country.”

As their rights continue to be stripped away from them, Afghan women and girls are put in an especially difficult situation.

“Freedoms granted to Afghan women will be stripped away by the Taliban despite the group’s claims,” Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution said in a report by CNBC.

Jolie, who was recently announced to be in Marvel's Eternals, is a humanitarian known for her work as  Special Envoy for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Bolstered by what she had seen in war-torn Cambodia (which she witnessed while filming the first Lara Croft film), Jolie went on her first field visit in 2001, and has since undertaken "over a dozen field missions globally to refugee camps and war zones," including Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sudan.

If you want to see how you can help women in Afghanistan, check Women for Women International, which is collecting donations for its emergency relief fund.

Lead photo from IMdB