strenghthen emissions—cutting targets for 2030. summit president, alok sharma, said the agreement would keep within reach the goal of limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees celsius. but a last minute intervention from india watered down the commitment. the final text changed the expression "phasing out" of coal to "phasing down", leaving many nations deeply disappointed. the un secretary general said the world was still knocking on the door of a climate catastrophe belarus has said it's stepping up humanitarian support to migrants trapped on the border with poland. it's been accused by the european union of cynically using them as political pawns, by engineering a surge in retaliation for eu sanctions against minsk. poland has accused belarus of trying to establish a permanent camp. now on bbc news, it's spotlight: escape from kabul.

the story of an interpreter�*s family who fled afghanistan and are settling in ireland. in august, the world watched in in august, the world watched in horror as desperate afghan citizens tried to flee as the taliban and swept back into control across the country. many feared our return to the brutal regime they knew from two decades ago. i first ifirst spoke to i first spoke to him and good

morning, as the taliban seized power. morning, as the taliban seized ower. ., , power. the men who served in the armed _ power. the men who served in the armed forces _ power. the men who served in the armed forces in _ power. the men who served in the armed forces in the - the armed forces in the province in 2012 says it's now a race against time to save the family of his afghan interpreter. what do you think you can do about this? we have to be clear about this the threats are there 7 they are going to murder innocent civilians. the people the taliban were threatning to murder were the family of tim mccullagh 5 afghan interpreter bilal nasiri, someone he had relied upon when he d been on the ground in afghanistan working on reconstruction projects for the war torn country. and what was bilal s role as your interpreter? he was not somebody who just sits in a nice safe building. he was on patrol with us on a daily basis. but the difference being is he's not allowed to carry a weapon system. but he's still there. he's still in uniform. and often we'd hear over the, the taliban chatter that they, the target was the, was the interpreter, rather than the soldiers. because of the, of the intelligence, and the skills that they could bring in order

to help us understand, uh, how the taliban operated. uh, and what the locals wanted. so, by, by taking an interpreter out, it would put the fear into other interpreters. and ultimately then that meant that we would be on our, on our own on the ground. under frequent fire and the constant threat of improvised explosive devices, ieds, tim mccullagh valued his interpreters calm approach. bilal was brilliant. um, he, he's got a wicked sense of humour, which was always useful whenever we were on patrol. you know, temperatures at sort of 50 degrees celsius, carrying an excessive amount of weight, 20 to 30 kilos. and then having to deal with the other challenges of ieds or of being, uh, shot at. he kept a level of calmness in us because we could see in him how confident he felt about where we were. bilal emigrated to australia in 2016 but his family remained in kabul and when the taliban returned this august they came looking for him

with a chilling message. if he didn t return to face theirjustice they would kill his family. that s a pretty extreme potential punishment. how sure were you that he was telling the truth? i was given copies of the letters. so, i've seen the letters that the taliban had issued. but i could see the sincerity in, in both bilal and also then his brother, when i spoke to him as well, that at that point, when they were having to leave their house and hide in different houses every night. it told me the severity of it. that this wasn't, this wasn't a made up story. this was genuine. but it was bilal s insistence on facing taliban justice that prompted tim to get more deeply involved. bilal told me then that he was going to return to afghanistan so that the taliban could kill him and save his family. it's at that point then that i knew i had to do something more. but as a serving member of the armed forces that meant breaking rank ? speaking

to the media, and lobbying politicians. he tried to get the family onto the uk governments refugee list, but failed because bilal himself was already out of the country. in fact, it was the irish government who offered them refuge, if the british naval officer could only get the family to the airport. we had worked out a route to get through kabul airport. and on the day they were due to go through kabul airport, is when the suicide bomber happened. causalities rushed yet again into kabul s emergency hospital. the afghans who were hoping to be on an aeroplane today flying out to a safer place. they were literally 15 minutes away from getting to the holding area. so potentially could've been, could ve been, uh, killed at that point. that meant then had to think of a different route. and we started calling upon every contact, every source we had to find out if we could do that it involved

it involved dangerous and unconventional means to move the family through taliban territory and across the border. we re not revealing details to protect others. it meant tim doing things his navy bosses wouldn t like. his 24—year career in the service was now on the line. it's a sacrifice i knew was worth taking, because i can't live with myself if i don't help people as best as i can, and we claim to be humanitarian, part of humankind, well humankind seems a bit of an oxymoron at times because it doesn't seem that humans are very kind. the taliban were last in power more than 20 years ago. and one man from belfast has known them well since those brutal, early days. despite the more recent media friendly image, professor michael semple isn t convinced the taliban has changed. this is one of these times when you ve got to ask you know remarkably many of those same,

same men that i knew 25 years ago are still in positions of authority inside the, the taliban movement. growing up in north belfast during the troulbes in some ways prepared him for his future career as one of the world 5 leading experts on afghanistan. my father was a quantity surveyor, and so, you know one of the things i remember of my, sort of, you know, childhood routine was you know every, every weekend being dragged down to the latest bombsight, to see what had been blown up during the week, because my father was there with the measuring tape and trying to work out what it would cost to put it back together again. he then took his own measuring tape, of sorts, to afghanistan when he worked for the un during the first period of taliban rule when few others dared, monitoring and reporting on their cultural and human rights abuses. from detailing the destruction of the sixth century buddhas of bamiyan. .. what we found was a scene of complete devastation. .

the forces who had retaken their town rushed first - to the place where the buddhas ? the largest in the ancient- world stood until they were destroyed by the taliban. l ..to investigating the massacre of innocent civilians. he was on the ground before any western troops. a quarter of a century later, the taliban are back in charge and he fears they will be out for revenge. he has personally helped get some high profile figures out of the country for whom taliban rule would be a likely death sentence. this imminent threat has affected prominent people who are well known to the taliban because of their role in public life, but in terms of military hierarchy, you know, people far lower down the pecking order also have good reason to fear the taliban, and over the past month, there's been

a steady stream of reports of disappearances and summary executions. people fleeing their homeland in desperation and in fear for their lives. this was hardly the future anyone fought for. doug beattie served three tours in the country. those are sort of difficult scenes, i suppose, for anybody to watch, but particularly, no doubt, for people who knew the country, like yourself. yeah, they were ? they were images of desperation, - they were images of - panic, they were images of an abandoned country, um, and people desperate to ? - to flee it. so desperate that they would hang onto an aircraft - that s about to take off. 0n doug beattie 5 first tour, the fighting was intense. seen here in 2006, when nato

troops fought the taliban over 1a days at garmsir in helmand province. his actions earned him the military cross. back up. bring it forward with the gun. tell him he has achieved as . much as he s going to achieve. we have no more i to support him with. so it's probably best| he s cleared what he can so come back now. he must to it orderly. not to run back i but to patrol back. we own this ground. nine soldiers, eight men and one woman, from northern ireland lost their lives during the war in afghanistan. there were a57 deaths of uk armed forces personnel. more than 100,000 afghans, military and civilian, killed during the brutal conflict over the last 20 years. conveying the experience of that war, the sheer horror of it, to those of us who were never there, is a difficult thing to do.

you can't explain because words are words, and it's _ very two dimensional, but what happened i in afghanistan was very three dimensional and when you're| fighting hand to hand - with somebody, when you're literally having to ? to use| everything at your disposal to keep yourself alive, i complete your mission, and at the same time, kill the enemy fighterl who's fighting you. that face to face fightingl and it takes a terrible toll some memories still haunt him, the two suicide bombings he survived, and the death of civilians such as a young girl called shabia. her body was punctured i by a mortar bomb that had exploded and her life . was slowly ebbing away, and as i tried to save her life i found myself completely i impotent, that i had nothing in my arsenal to be able - to save this young girl's life. her grandfather looking at me as if i had all- of the answers to the problem that was in front, and i had i none of the answers. its made all the more difficult because, like many

veterans, he now questions what the war achieved. on his last tour in afghanistan the focus had shifted from fighting to rebuilding. the hope he sensed then is now a painful memory. when i look back at what. the place was like in 2006 to what it is like now, - there is a vast vast change. what is the most important thing of it all, is that therei is a confidence within - the people of afghanistan and certainly within helmand that they are happy to move i towards that change, - to support the government and there s a willingness to do so _ so there is changes and happening... . what are your thoughts, just listening back to that sort of confidence now? this is why this hurts so much actually, on watching this, - cos i'm looking at this and i'm thinking, had we just- carried on doing - what we were doing, at the level we were doing it, then we could be in a very- different situation now. so the confidence was there.

i think we've thrown that all away. - does it make you feel that the whole exercise was futile? there is things that we did which will endure, - but as a project, the whole thing has now— collapsed and failed. six weeks after the fall of kabul and the taliban death threat issued to interpreter bilal nasiri 5 family, and tim mccullough had some exciting news about their escape. just tell us, what's happening at the moment? so, right at the very moment, they're in the air, they've left turkey, they're due to touch down in ireland in about two hours time. the family were far from afghanistan, out of danger and now en route to ireland. tim was ordered not to travel by his navy bosses. but i was heading to dublin airport and hoping to meet them. well, we re not far from the airport now, where within the hour, we should hopefully be seeing bilal 5 family arrive safely in ireland. their new home. their new place of refuge.

before going inside, i put a call through to bilal in australia, who couldn t be there because of covid restrictions. the family were due on a flight from turkey landing soon. 0h, hi, bilal, how are you? very well. can you sort of tell us what it feels like today to be on the cusp of seeing yourfamily arrive? i don t think there is any feeling like this, any word you can describe the feelings that i have, to feel like... ..to know that your family's out of danger and to know they're just about to land in a country where they will start a new life, and to know that they are safe, it's very touching. very, very touching. what would have happened if they hadn't escaped kabul? god knows. like many people that have been left behind, you know, by many countries and their evacuation progress that got cancelled, there's a lot of reports of,

you know, people knocking on the doors and searching and... and there was most likely, they were, you know, they were tortured, or killed just because what i used to do, you know? i used to work with british troops, to bring stability, to bring peace, and because of me, you know, they would have been killed. well, bilal, we're going to go inside and keep an eye out and hopefully catch the family as they come through, and maybe i could call you again on zoom and you can chat to them as they arrive. yeah, that would be amazing. i don t know if there's anybody else, so, yeah, it would be... ..it would be beautiful. i would love to see them, yeah, coming through that airport. once inside the arrivals hall, it was clear that there was a welcoming party. mp stephen farry arrived. he was instrumental in securing the family 5 safe passage to ireland. his consituent, tim mccullagh, who had enlisted his help, joined remotely. it was now a waiting game with fingers crossed that the authorities wouldn t bring the family out via a different exit.

i got into position, bilal on zoom, with my phone camera trained on the door. eventually, patience was rewarded. that s my brother, that s my brother. in the green, is that your brother in the green shirt? that s my brother, that s iqbal. and that sjamal coming out now. oh, my god. they re here. we did it. that s my family. oh, my god. and that s my beautiful mother. after their long and dangerous journey, the family clearly wanted to thank the mp and others who had helped get them out. ireland will give you i a very warm welcome. hopefully we ll get - you settled in properly. i and my office and my team are very happyjust to help l over the next weeks and months as you integrate into your-

new life here in ireland. bilal s brother, iqbal, spoke for the group. did you think you would see this day? no, absolutely not. it was just like a dream for us to be here, and its all for the support and help of the team and especially for the government of ireland that have helped us and to reach ireland and to save our lives, to save our family 5 lives. i m really excited. i cannot express my feelings, and also most of my family members, they don't know english, that 5 why they cannot speak with you guys. otherwise, they would express their feelings to you, and they are really glad, they re safe and they re in a safe country. ill be coming down to see you as soon as i possibly i can and take you out. watching them via livestream with one of the others - who helped moved them and then to watch bilal, the raw— emotional reaction of| bilal wasjust, it was,

it was heart—breaking - in a good sense, and just an amazing feeling and myself and the others _ who were watching, it was like, i think, you know, it was like a football match i where we were screaming - and cheering in our own ways, when we heard bilal say those words, "that's my brother," l as he came through the arrival gates. . 0n the way out of the airport, i caught up with stephen farry. his relief was palpable. i've been in politics for almost 30 years now, and i have to say this has probably been the most complex, the most emotional and ultimately the most rewarding case i've ever been involved with. this was a hugely dangerous situation. they were in huge danger staying in kabul, because of their family association with bilal, and any movement —— of theirfamily

association with bilal. thousands have fled taliban rule. many millions remain and cannot leave. even without further bloodshed, they now face the prospect of economic collapse and starvation as winter closes in. and a woman from donegal has the job of keeping them alive. so, we're trying to scale up. the race is on against the clock, against the winter clock, really, to reach 1a million people before the end of the year. i basically have to get 190,000 tonnes, and that's notjust one or two trucks, you know, into the country and out into the communities before the snow starts. as director of the united nations world food programme in afghanistan, mary ellen mcgroarty is on the ground assessing the problems. yeah, we ve had no rain since spring. since spring time, right? february. when are you expecting the rain again? when should it start? well, towards the end of october. the country is already suffering drought, and when winter hits, with temperatures down to —40

celsius, movement of anything becomes almost impossible. so all agencies are desperate to act now. the entire humanitarian sector, because, i mean, it's notjust the food and nutrition, but it's also shelter items as well to help people try and keep warm. so, all the different sectors now are really, you know, trying to stabilise the situation, a situation that continues to deteriorate every day and every week. can you give us a sense of some of the cases that you're encountering? people are coming in from the provinces because as the money has been cut off from the international community, the health services are collapsing in the provinces. and they're coming into the major towns. and they're coming in too late. i mean, in terms of the malnutrition for children, and you think, "oh, my goodness, we're not even in winter yet." i've met women who've told me, you know, they haven't eaten in three days. i've met, you know, men in the displacement camps and they have, because the jobs are gone, they have nothing to do. so, isaid, "how are you surviving?" they told me their wives

are going to rubbish pits and picking up plastic and paper and trying to sell it, right? it terrifies me to see how quickly it's deteriorating. mary ellen has had a long career in humanitarian work. she assumed her role in afghanistan a year ago, and despite the terror and mayhem of august, she never considered leaving. i wasn't leaving unless it became completely untenable for us to stay. and if we were leaving, of course, you know, we would have been one of the last out anyway because, i mean, that's what we do. i mean, we're here to try and save lives in crisis situations. 0k. thank you. yeah, yeah, beautiful. to ensure children like these don t starve, she must now work with the new taliban rulers and hope the future isn t as awful as many fear. i know, look at that.

they do know us. they know our work. i have met two of the caretaker cabinet who are responsible, you know, forfacilitating our work. and they've been willing to listen. but, of course, as we move forward, we continue to monitor the situation. michael semple is a keen runner and took part in the recent belfast marathon. he likens his work in afghanistan to that long—distance commitment. and believes his upbringing on these streets has helped prepare him for that role. being able to navigate northern ireland with due sensitivity enables you, or at least gives you a good head start in trying to understand where afghans are coming from and successfully navigate afghanistan. though far from perfect,

he feels the peace process in northern ireland could still offer lessons for afghanistan. i think that some of the things which went right in northern ireland were neglected in afghanistan and helped to explain why peace has still proven elusive. and one important lesson of northern ireland, according to michael semple, is that problems don t go away. politicians must stay the marathon course. keep hergoing. the war continues, which of course is a tragedy forafghanistan, potential source of instability in the region and globally. there must be a peace process. this isn t a happy ending. it's not a... it's certainly not happy, and it's not an ending.

last week, i caught up with tim mccullough —— i caught up with tim mccullough for a special journey. he d brought some supplies. so, what have we got, clothes, toys? clothes, toys, and then there 5 a little cot there. maybe that goes in at the bottom. baby supplies as well, yeah? and then the important bit, the green tea. afghans love their tea. that 5 good. ahead of us, a four—hour trip towards the west of ireland, and for tim, having agreed resignation terms with the navy, his first chance to meet the family he had helped rescue from a death sentence. interesting to see what their accommodation is like. you talk about being off the beaten track, this certainly feels like it, doesn t it? this small town in rural roscommon is an unlikely home to several refugee families from war—torn syria and afghanistan. well, ive just dropped tim off with the supplies to meet

the centre houses a number of different families, so due to sensitivies, we didn tfilm there, but met in nearby church grounds. it was the initial, as soon as iqbal came out, they... there was such raw emotions of pure joy. i knew they were safe here, but to see them and, you know, to have that first sort of connection was brilliant and then the rest of the family just kept coming out and every time they did, there was just more and more joy. i just felt absolutely brilliant, but, you know, one of the happiest days i've had in a very long time, i can tell you. jamal, bilal s younger brother, hopes to continue his university studies. his nephew, yasir, will start nursery school. sima, a doctor who escaped with the family, is taking english lessons and hopes to practice professionally. 0therfamily members, including the girls back at the centre nearby, can restart education. the first thing they need to learn is language, then hopefully they will be able, because they have as much talent, to start their education and to finish it over here. and one day you will hear about

them, that they will have a big achievement in ireland, and they will be the servant of ireland. for tim mccullagh, it has meant leaving a secure career in the navy as he has turned his attention instead to working on getting others to safety. you must have had friends or family maybe saying to you in recent days, "tim, we respect what you re doing, but you re risking too much." there's been a few who have said that, but i've probably had more support than i have had those saying don't do it, but in the armed forces, we're taught about moral courage, about doing the right thing, and this to me is the right thing. it's saving lives. it's what we as humans should be doing. we should be doing our very best to help other humans who are in a predicament not as good as ours.

hello there. part one of the weekend was a little bit dull for many of us. we held onto cloudy skies, sunshine was limited. it is going to be pretty similar, i think, for sunday, with limited sunshine, a lot of cloud around, and there will be some rain as well, particularly across the northwest at the uk closer to this area of low pressure and its weather front. but further south, its higher pressure, barely any isobars, so the winds will be light. but it is still going to be relatively mild for the time of year, particularly towards the western side of the country, as we draw up the south—westerly breeze. now, we start sunday morning off on a rather cloudy note. there could be a little bit of sunshine too, but also some mist and fog patches to watch out for. i think into the afternoon, much of england and wales should tend to see more holes breaking in the cloud with some sunny spells. a few showers across the southeast there, but the wettest and breeziest of the weather will be across the north and west of scotland, perhaps northwestern parts of northern ireland. 11—14 celsius pretty mild, but we could see 15

degrees for belfast. now, as we head through sunday night, that weather front in the northwest begins to sink southwards and eastwards. but as it's running into an area of high pressure, it will begin to fizzle out. so the rain will get lighter. there will be some heavier bursts on it, i think, during sunday night. those temperatures range from 6—11 celsius. so, this weather front will be sinking slowly southeastwards, almost grinding to a halt. as it pushes into that area of high pressure, it will fizzle out through the day. so, we start off with some patchy rain for southern scotland, just pushing into parts of northwest england and northwest wales, but you can see it fades away and just leaves no more than a band of cloud. behind it, skies brighten for scotland and northern ireland, just a few blustery showers, but a much better day. further south and east, another rather cloudy one for much of england and wales, limited sunshine once again. temperatures 11—12, maybe 13 celsius. as we move through the rest of the week, it stays milder, even turns very mild at times, particularly across southern areas, and most of the wind and the rain will be confined

to the north of the uk, as you can see here, as we run through tuesday into wednesday, it's low—pressure to the north of the uk, which will bring these spells of wet and windy weather further south closer to this area of high pressure, this is where we will see the light winds and the more settled conditions. but you'll see how mild it is. temperatures reaching the mid—teens at times, particularly across southern areas. quite a bit of cloud around, limited sunshine with most of the rain confined to northern areas. see you later.

this is bbc news, i'm rich preston. our top stories: hearing no objections, it is so decided. after two weeks of intense negotiations at the global climate summit, world leaders have agreed a deal, but is it good enough? the agreement means countries must strengthen their targets to cut emissions for 2030. but a last minute intervention from india waters down the commitment to phase out coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, leaving many deeply disappointed. the cop26 president alok sharma was visibly emotional as he apologised for the way in which the talks ended. un secretary general, antonio guterres, calls the final agreement in glasgow an important step, but questions if it's enough to avoid what he calls �*climate catastrophe'.