WASHINGTON: Khalid Payenda, who was once Afghanistan's finance minister, now makes a living in Washington as an Uber driver. A week before the Taliban seized Kabul, Payenda had resigned from his position after President Ashraf Ghani lashed out at him in a public meeting.
The finance minister didn't think the government was about to fall, however, he felt he had lost the Ashraf Ghani president's trust, The Washington Post reported.
Even after the months of the tragic fall of Afghanistan, the question of who was at fault still haunts Payenda. Payenda shares the blame with his fellow Afghans and himself for the swift collapse of the democratically elected government.
"We didn't have the collective will to reform, to be serious," he said. The former minister also blamed the Americans for handing the country to the Taliban and betraying the enduring values that supposedly had animated their fight. "It eats at you inside," he said.
"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."
The Taliban in last August took control of Afghanistan since then country is in chaos and in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Last week, Afghanistan was listed as the world's unhappiest country for the second year in a row.
The World Happiness Report, a publication of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, every year rates happiness with a survey of about 149 countries. The annual report ranked Afghanistan as last among 149 countries surveyed, while Finland remained the world's happiest country.