Late August this year, Taliban soldiers firing their weapons in the air

to disperse a surging crowd at Kabul Airport.

This was one of the images the world got to see of Afghanistan in those hectic days.

This and throngs of desperate people trying however they might to force their way out of the capital.

They are searching for the people who work for the British forces, for the NATO, for ISAF, for Americans.

They will not leave them.

I have a daughter. I was crying for her because she doesn't know about her future.

I can't believe the world abandoned Afghanistan.

Our friends are going to get killed. They're going to kill us.

My name's Ed Butler. And here on Business Daily today on the BBC, we're going to be hearing from an Afghan

who'd already managed to escape the capital by this time. He had been the Minister of Finance,

the very last to serve under President Ashraf Ghani. Khalid Payenda is his name.

To be very honest, I was running away from the president. I had become

incredibly difficult to be a minister of finance. But I did not know. Honestly, nobody thought, you know,

the collapse would be so sudden. Khali Payenda hasn't given a broadcast interview since that day in August.

Many Afghans feel enraged by the failures of his US-backed government.

Reportedly, it was rife with corruption and incompetence,

and it abandoned them, they say, in their hour of need.

A US-educated economist, Khaliaienda, had already worked in the ministry

at a more junior level for several years when he was originally asked to take over the top job.

This was back in January. What he found, he says, were finances in a state of chaos, political

wrangling over the national budget, and key sources of crucial income, like border customs, he says,

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