Angelina Jolie Criticizes ‘Chaotic’ U.S. Withdrawal From Afghanistan: ‘As An American I Am Ashamed’

Angelina Jolie is deeply unhappy with the current situation in Afghanistan after the U.S. abruptly withdrew troops, resulting in chaos and anarchy as the government fell to the Taliban within days, and she shared her thoughts in an op-ed she wrote for Time.

“Whatever your views on the war in Afghanistan, we probably agree on one thing: it should not have ended this way,” she begins.

“Giving up the idea of a peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, appearing to cut and run, and abandoning our allies and supporters in the most chaotic way imaginable, after so many years of effort and sacrifice, is a betrayal and a failure impossible to fully understand,” Jolie continues.

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“After all the bloodshed and effort and sacrifice and time, America seems to have lacked the will to plan this transition in a managed way. It was never going to be easy or perfect but could have been better, more decent and safer,” she points out.

“As an American I am ashamed by the manner of our leaving. It diminishes us,” she writes.

“We have lost leverage to influence what now happens in Afghanistan,” she adds, pointing to the Taliban’s track record for mistreating women.

“We lack a strategy to monitor and support women and civil society in Afghanistan, who the Taliban have a history of targeting — banning girls from school, confining women to the home, and inflicting brutal physical punishments, including public lashing, on any woman perceived to have stepped out of line,” she states, adding that the withdrawal has unleashed “a new refugee crisis, on top of record global displacement, with nearly a quarter of a million Afghans displaced within the country since May —  80 per cent of them women and girls.”

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In addition, Jolie shared a post on Instagram — her second since joining the social media platform last week — to draw attention to the plight of refugees, not just from Afghanistan but from other war-torn parts of the world.