Washington: Former Afghan Finance Minister Khalid Payenda managed to flee the country just before the Taliban takeover in August last year. People will be shocked to know what he does to earn a living. The ‘Guardian’ reported Monday that Khalid Payenda now drives an Uber in the US capital.
“If I complete 50 trips in the next two days, I receive a $95 bonus,” the ‘Guardian’ quoted Payenda as saying. He was then sitting behind the wheel of a Honda Accord.
The 40-year-old Payenda once oversaw a US-supported $6 billion budget. The ‘Washington Post’ reported that in one night earlier this week, he made ‘a little over $150 for six hours’ work, not counting his commute – a mediocre night’.
Payenda resigned as Finance Minister a week before the Taliban seized Kabul. It happened as his relationship with former President Asraf Ghani deteriorated. Fearing that Ghani would have him arrested, he left Afghanistan for the US, where he joined his family.
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“We had 20 years and the whole world’s support to build a system that would work for the people,” Payenda said in a text message to a World Bank official in Kabul on the day the capital fell. “All we built was a house of cards that came down crashing this fast. A house of cards built on the foundation of corruption,” he added.
The ‘Post’ recorded Payenda telling one passenger his move from Kabul to Washington had been ‘quite an adjustment’. He also said he was grateful for the opportunity to be able to support his family but, ‘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,” the former minister said.
“I saw a lot of ugliness, and we failed,” Payenda said. “I was part of the failure. It’s difficult when you look at the misery of the people and you feel responsible.”
Payenda told the Washington Post he believed Afghans ‘didn’t have the collective will to reform, to be serious’. But he also said the US betrayed its commitment to democracy and human rights after making Afghanistan a centrepiece of post-9/11 policy.