While many countries in the Middle East and North Africa bicker over water rights, Libya has tapped into an aquifer of 'fossil water' to change its topography – turning sand into soil. The 26-year, $20 billion project is nearly finished. …The Great Man-Made River, which is leader Muammar Qaddafi's ambitious answer to the country’s water problems, irrigates Libya’s large desert farms. The 2,333-mile network of pipes ferry water from four major underground aquifers in southern Libya to the northern population centers. Wells punctuate the water’s path, allowing farmers to utilize the water network in their fields. ... “Water is more precious for us than oil. ... Water here in Libya, it’s life.”

London and Washington circles were apoplectic about the opening of the new Libyan water project. The London Financial Times ran criticisms of the project from Angus Henley of the London-based Middle East Economic Digest. The pipeline, he said, was ``Qaddafi's pet project. He wants to be seen as something other than the scourge of the West.'' The Financial Times called the project Qaddafi's ``pipedream,'' stating that critics may be awed by the engineering involved, ``But they regard the dream as a monument to vanity that makes little economic sense in a country where the U.N. Development Program says 94.6% of territory is desert wasteland.''