Afghanistan’s last finance minister Khalid Payenda now drives Uber in Washington DC

In an interview with the Washington Post, the last finance minister of Afghanistan said that now he drives an Uber cab in Washington DC to make ends meet for his family.

New Delhi: Khalid Payenda, who resigned as the finance minister days before Kabul fell to the Taliban, is now driving an Uber in Washington DC to support his family. 

According to a report in The Washington Post, Payenda also works as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.

The last finance minister of the Ashraf Ghani government, in an interview with the Washington Post, said he is grateful for the gigs that he has found as it helps him to provide for his family of wife and four children. 

Payenda also expressed gratitude towards the work he has been getting and said, “I feel incredibly grateful for it. It means I don’t have to be desperate.”

“Right now, I don’t have any place,” he said. “I don’t belong here, and I don’t belong there. It’s a very empty feeling,” Khalid said. 

According to the former finance minister of Afghanistan, nobody is above blame, not even he himself. While the US abandoned Afghans, Afghanistan did not have the collective will to reform, he said.

Payenda in the interview also said that he holds the Americans responsible for the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. He highlighted that the US betrayed its commitment to democracy and human rights after making Afghanistan a centerpiece of post-9/11 policy.

“Maybe there were good intentions initially but the United States probably didn’t mean this,” Payenda said.