Afghan’s Former FM Now Uber Driver
Washington, March 21: Afghanistan’s former Finance Minister Khalid Payenda, who once oversaw $6 billion budget, has become a Uber driver in Washington to support his family.
According to The Washington Post, Payenda had resigned as finance minister a week before the Taliban seized Kabul, when then-President Ashraf Ghani lashed out at him in a public meeting and then privately upbraided him over the ministry’s failure to make a relatively small payment to a Lebanese company.
Since reaching Washington, he has been feeing “trapped between his old life and dreams for Afghanistan and a new life in the United States that he had never really wanted”. He said, “Right now, I don’t have any place. I don’t belong here, and I don’t belong there. It’s a very empty feeling. “I feel incredibly grateful for it. It means I don’t have to be desperate”.
The former minister further said that among those responsible for the fall of Afghanistan to Taliban are the Americans who had touted their mission to be of upholding democracy and human rights in the country,” he added.
