Afghanistan’s Last Finance Minister Now an Uber Driver

“Until last summer, Khalid Payenda was Afghanistan’s finance minister, overseeing a $6 billion budget — the lifeblood of a government fighting for its survival in a war that had long been at the center of U.S. foreign policy,” the Washington Post reports.

“Now, seven months after Kabul had fallen to the Taliban, he was at the wheel of his Honda Accord, headed north on I-95 from his home in Woodbridge, Va., toward Washington, D.C. Payenda swiped at his phone and opened the Uber app, which offered his ‘quest’ for the weekend. For now his success was measured in hundreds of dollars rather than billions.”