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

'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.

[continues 1170 words]