Academy Award-winning actress Angelina Jolie joined social media platform Instagram on Friday and used her platform to speak out on the terrible Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, which threatened the safety of Afghan women and children in the war-stricken country.
Upon joining the social media platform, she amassed over 7.6 million followers, who witnessed her first post, titled "A Letter from an Afghan Girl."
"Right now, the people of Afghanistan are losing their ability to communicate on social media and to express themselves freely," Jolie wrote. "So 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."
"It is sickening to watch Afghans being displaced yet again out of the fear and uncertainty that has gripped their country," the 46 year old actress and diplomat wrote. "To spend so much time and money, to have blood shed and lives lost only to come to this, is a failure almost impossible to understand."
According to The Blaze, the American government has spent about $2.26 trillion since 2001 for the war, which also involved 170,000 casualties. Jolie, who is the Special Envoy to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, also criticized the Biden administration's mishandling of the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in an op-ed for Time magazine.
Jolie, who has undertaken several dozen field missions to refugee camps in war zones in Pakistan, Syria, and Afghanistan, among others, wrote that the Biden administration "lacked the will to plan this transition in a managed way" and how it "lost leverage to influence what now happens in Afghanistan."
The star of Marvel's upcoming blockbuster "Eternals" also lamented the plight of women and children, who under the hands of the Taliban are denied basic human rights such as access to education. She called to mind Afghan girls who dared to dream about getting an education, "even though [they] risked being killed for it."
On Sunday, President Joe Biden said that his administration is considering extending the original deadline for evacuating Afghanistan on August 31, CNBC reported. He lamented that the exit of U.S. troops was "going to be hard and painful no matter when it started, when we began," standing by his decision to send them home. He reported, however, that 33,000 have been evacuated since July and 11,000 have safely fled Afghanistan just this weekend. The Democratic leader promised that "any American who wants to get home will get home."
The U.S. has sought the help of its allies to get Americans safely out of Afghanistan, reaching an agreement with about two dozen countries across four continents to assist in moving people out of Kabul, which has fallen into the hands of the Taliban.
Currently, the planes leaving Afghanistan are landing at military bases and processing centers all over the world, where security screenings are taking place for those who are not U.S. citizens. President Biden's approval rating dropped amid the Afghanistan crisis, earning the lowest ratings since he took over the White House in January.
