Time & Pomegranates
Jim....@sct.nhs.uk
Ex-drug dealer James Brett has beaten his own demons. He tells Mark
Collings he now hopes to take on the opium growers - with pomegranates
The Observer,
Sunday August 3 2008
'Pomegranates are the answer to all this,' said James Brett, as we
drove past the colourless, mud-brick villages and makeshift graveyards
that litter the parched landscape of Nangarhar province. We were on
our way to Markoh, a small village 40 minutes' drive inside the Afghan
border with Pakistan. Brett first visited Markoh in April 2007. On his
way to a seminar in Kabul, he had asked the driver to stop the car so
that he could speak to a reed-thin figure extracting opium from the
poppies.
'My translator told me not to do it. He said "you'll get shot", but I
just felt like the first step had to be made that day.' That 'first
step' was walking into the field to try to persuade the farmer to stop
growing poppies and start growing pomegranates instead.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/03/afghanistan.drugstrade