The 47-year-old Academy Award winner wrote an opinion piece for TIME on the atrocities. Afghan women continue to endure under tyrannical rule one year after the withdrawal of American forces and the Taliban’s control of the nation.
She described seeing a teenage immigrant in Rome who, before the Afghan government was toppled, was “months from certifying as a physician” and whose sisters had also been denied an education.
They, along with an additional 14 million Afghan women and girls, “forfeited their right to attend high school or university, their ability to work, and their movement freedom overnight,” Jolie stated.
The advancements made by Afghan women over the previous 20 years, according to Jolie, have “been reversed with astonishing rapidity” despite being “a light shining during years of continuing conflict and misery for the people of Afghanistan.”
The Afghan daughters are outstanding for their fortitude, resiliency, and creativity, she continued. The Eternals singer described the mistreatment of Afghan women, involving child brides to Taliban commanders, political detention without trial, public beatings, and kidnapping.
The strongest opposition to the restoration of women’s rights in Afghanistan has not been generated by foreign forces, Jolie said, but rather from Afghan women who have marched to the streets. Jolie said that the U.S. and its allies leaving Afghanistan was “the worst conceivable action.”
“There have been numerous gloomy times throughout Afghanistan’s history. Unquestionably, this is one of them. However, I’m certain that this isn’t the last chapter.
The vision of a diverse, open Afghanistan based on the equal contributions and unrestricted speech of all its citizens may appear to be — and actually is — a faraway dream. But I’m aware that it’s feasible. This is not the end of it, “Jolie summed up. An estimated 80,000 Afghans who aided the United States throughout the war are still there.