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Angelina Jolie joins Instagram with powerful 1st post

The 46-year-old actor and activist shared a letter from an Afghan girl, who wrote that she is scared of the Taliban's ascendance into power.
/ Source: TODAY

Angelina Jolie is joining Instagram, and she is doing so in a very powerful way.

The 46-year-old actor and activist, who serves as a special envoy to the United Nations refugee agency, shared a letter Friday from an Afghan girl, who wrote that she is scared of the Taliban's ascendance into power in the country.

"This is a letter I was sent from a teenage girl in Afghanistan," Jolie wrote in the caption of a gallery of images that included a photo of the letter. "Right now, the people of Afghanistan are losing their ability to communicate on social media and to express themselves freely. 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."

In the letter, the girl said before the Taliban took control of the country, "we all went to work, school ... properly."

"We all had rights," she continued. "We was able to defend our rights freely, but when they came, we are all afraid of them, and we think all our dreams are gone. We think our rights have been violated. We cannot get out. Studying and working is too far away. But some people say the Taliban's change(d), but I do not think so because they have a very bad past.

"One day they come to our house and we were all scared. And after that day I thought about what kind of time I should go to school in the morning in this situation, because of their existence, or when I came home from course again, the air was dark, but I could come home very easily, but now I cannot go to the course easily. I think the course will be closed. Maybe we can go back to last 20 years, and again we have no rights. The life of all of us is dark.

"We all lost our freedom, and we are imprisoned again," the young girl ended her letter.

Jolie used the caption of her post to also share her own personal relationship with the country.

"I was on the border of Afghanistan two weeks before 9/11, where I met Afghan refugees who had fled the Taliban. This was twenty years ago," she said. "It is sickening to watch Afghans being displaced yet again out of the fear and uncertainty that has gripped their country. 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."

The actor, who has been a special envoy to the United Nations since 2012, wrote that "watching for decades how Afghan refugees — some of the most capable people in the world — are treated like a burden is also sickening.

"Knowing that if they had the tools and respect, how much they would do for themselves," she added. "And meeting so many women and girls who not only wanted an education, but fought for it.

"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 link in the bio for Jolie's Instagram page led to a news article on the U.N. refugee agency site, discussing the humanitarian crisis happening in the embattled country.

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