The 'Salt' star's most recent visit in Iraq left her 'speechless' after she listened to heart-wrenching stories and the 'unspeakable brutality' experienced by Iraqi and Syrian refugees.
- Jan 28, 2015
AceShowbiz - Angelina Jolie has visited Iraq five times. Most recently, she headed to Northern Iraq over the weekend to visit a refugee camp for people who have been forced to leave their homes following ISIS attacks. The star of "The Tourist" had never witnessed a situation as heart-wrenching as the condition of the refugees were at the time of her visit. In an op-ed written for The New York Times, Jolie shares her experience visiting the refugee camp.
"I have visited Iraq five times since 2007, and I have seen nothing like the suffering I'm witnessing now," Brad Pitt's wife writes. "I came to visit the camps and informal settlements where displaced Iraqis and Syrian refugees are desperately seeking shelter from the fighting that has convulsed their region. In almost four years of war, nearly half of Syria's population of 23 million people has been uprooted. Within Iraq itself, more than two million people have fled conflict and the terror unleashed by extremist groups. These refugees and displaced people have witnessed unspeakable brutality. Their children are out of school, they are struggling to survive, and they are surrounded on all sides by violence."
Jolie recalls how she sat in the tent and tried her best to give some guidance, and how the moment left her "speechless." "How can you speak when a woman on your age looks you in the eye and tells you that her whole family was killed in front of her, and that she now lives alone in a tent and has minimal food rations?" Jolie says as she recounts her most recent trip.
Jolie's activities in humanity take place in between her busy schedule of filming her movies. In a recent interview, she revealed that she wanted her kids, Vivienne and Knox, 6, Shiloh, 8, Zahara, 9, Pax, 11, and Maddox, 13, to become humanitarian, not actor like their parents.
