artificial river. Gaddafi's grandiose water project

Irrigation system in the Libyan desert

In the desert areas of southern Libya, there is a great man-made river - a complex network of irrigation water pipelines, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records in 2008 as the largest irrigation project in the world. Circles of man-made oases scattered across arid regions and deserted coastlines are the result of watering machines connected to an irrigation system.
In 1953, in the course of geological exploration to search for oil deposits, giant underground reserves of drinking water were discovered in southern Libya, after which, in the 60s, the idea of building an irrigation system in the area arose.

Work on the Sahara offensive project began in 1984. The huge irrigation system included more than 1,300 wells from 1 to 3 km deep, from which water is brought to the surface and distributed through large channels. The diameter of the circular fields over which the irrigation machines rotate varies from a few hundred meters to 3 km.

The most grandiose project of Gaddafi is the Great Man-Made River. The media kept quiet about this project of Libya

The Great Manmade River (GMR) is a complex network of conduits that supplies the desert regions and coast of Libya with water from the Nubian aquifer. By some estimates, this is the largest engineering project in existence. This huge system of pipes and aqueducts, which also includes more than 1,300 wells over 500 meters deep, supplies the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte and others, supplying 6,500,000 m³ of drinking water per day. Muammar Gaddafi called this river the "Eighth Wonder of the World". In 2008, the Guinness Book of Records recognized the Great Man-Made River as the largest irrigation project in the world.

September 1, 2010 - the anniversary of the opening of the main section of the Great Libyan artificial river. This project of Libya was kept quiet by the world media, and by the way, this project surpasses the largest construction projects. Its cost is 25 billion US dollars.

Back in the 80s, Gaddafi began a large-scale project to create a network of water resources, which was supposed to cover Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Chad. To date, this project has been almost completed.

The task was, I must say, historical for the entire North African region, because the problem of water has been relevant here since the time of Phoenicia. And, more importantly, not a single cent from the IMF was spent on a project that could turn all of North Africa into a flowering garden. It is with the latter fact that some analysts associate the current destabilization of the situation in the region.

The desire for a global monopoly on water resources is already the most important factor in world politics. And in the south of Libya there are four giant water reservoirs (the oases of Kufra, Sirt, Morzuk and Hamada). According to some reports, they contain an average of 35,000 cubic meters. kilometers (!) of water. To imagine this volume, it is enough to imagine the entire territory of Germany as a huge lake 100 meters deep. Such water resources are undoubtedly of particular interest. And perhaps it is more than an interest in Libyan oil.
This water project has been called the "Eighth Wonder of the World" due to its scale. It provides a daily flow of 6.5 million cubic meters of water through the desert, greatly increasing the area of irrigated land. 4,000 kilometers of pipes buried deep in the ground from the heat. Underground water is pumped through 270 shafts from hundreds of meters deep. A cubic meter of the purest water from Libyan reservoirs, taking into account all costs, can cost 35 cents. This is the approximate cost of a cubic meter of cold water in Moscow. If we take the cost of a European cubic meter (about 2 euros), then the value of the water reserves in Libyan reservoirs is 58 billion euros.

The idea of extracting water hidden deep under the surface of the Sahara desert appeared back in 1983. In Libya, like its Egyptian neighbor, only 4 percent of the territory is suitable for human life, the remaining 96 percent is dominated by sands. Once upon a time, on the territory of modern Jamahiriya, there were riverbeds that flowed into the Mediterranean Sea. These channels dried up long ago, but scientists managed to establish that at a depth of 500 meters underground there are huge reserves - up to 12 thousand cubic kilometers of fresh water. Its age exceeds 8.5 thousand years, and it makes up the lion's share of all sources in the country, leaving an insignificant 2.3% for surface water and a little more than 1% for desalinated water. Simple calculations showed that the creation of a hydraulic system that allows pumping water from southern Europe will give Libya 0.74 cubic meters of water for one Libyan dinar. Delivery of life-giving moisture by sea will benefit up to 1.05 cubic meters per dinar. Desalination, which also requires powerful expensive installations, loses significantly, and only the development of the "Great Man-Made River" will make it possible to obtain nine cubic meters from each dinar. The project is still far from complete - the second phase is currently underway, which provides for the laying of the third and fourth stages of pipelines hundreds of kilometers inland and the installation of hundreds of deep wells. A total of 1,149 such wells were planned, including more than 400 still to be built. Over the past years, 1,926 km of pipes have been laid, and another 1,732 km are ahead. Each 7.5-meter steel pipe reaches four meters in diameter and weighs up to 83 tons, and there are more than 530.5 thousand such pipes in total. The total cost of the project is $25 billion. As Libyan Minister of Agriculture Abdel Majid al-Matrouh told journalists, the bulk of the produced water - 70% - goes to the needs of agriculture, 28% - to the population, the rest goes to industry.

"According to the latest research by experts from Southern Europe and North Africa, water from underground sources would be enough for another 5,000 years, although the average life of all equipment, including pipes, is estimated at 50 years," he said.
The man-made river now irrigates about 160,000 hectares of the country's territory, which is being actively developed for agriculture. And hundreds of kilometers to the south, on the paths of camel caravans, water trenches brought to the surface of the earth serve as a transit point and a resting place for people and animals. Looking at the result of the work of human thought in Libya, it is hard to believe that Egypt, which is experiencing the same problems, is suffering from overpopulation and cannot share the resources of the Nile with its southern neighbors. Meanwhile, on the territory of the Land of the Pyramids, countless reserves of life-giving moisture are also hidden underground, which is more valuable than all treasures for desert residents.

With its water project, Libya could start a real "green revolution". Literally, naturally, that would solve a lot of food problems in Africa. And most importantly, it would ensure stability and economic independence. Moreover, cases are already known when global corporations blocked water projects in the region. The World Bank and the IMF, for example, blocked the construction of a canal on the White Nile - the Jonglei Canal - in southern Sudan, where it was started and everything was abandoned after the US intelligence agencies provoked the growth of separatism there. It is, of course, much more profitable for the IMF and global cartels to impose their own expensive projects, such as desalination. An independent Libyan project did not fit into their plans. Compare with neighboring Egypt, where for the past 20 years all irrigation and water improvement projects have been sabotaged by the International Monetary Fund behind them. Gaddafi called on the Egyptian peasants, who number 55 million and all live in the overcrowded region along the banks of the Nile, to come and work in the fields of Libya now. 95% of Libya's land is desert. The new artificial river opens up huge opportunities for the development of this land. Libya's own water project was a slap in the face of the World Bank and the IMF and the entire West. The World Bank and the US State Department only support their own projects: ``Middle East Water Summit`` in November (2010) in Turkey, which considers only seawater desalinization projects in Saudi Arabia at a cost of 4 dollars per cubic meter. The United States benefits from a shortage of water - this increases the price of it. Washington and London almost had an apoplectic shock when they learned about the opening of the project in Libya. Everything that is needed for the project was produced in Libya itself. Nothing was bought from the "first world" countries, which help developing countries to rise from a lying position only if they can benefit from it

The United States was vigilant to ensure that no one dared to help Libya.
The USSR could no longer help, as it itself breathed its last breath, while the West sells Libya desalinized salt water at a price of $ 3.75. Now Libya no longer buys water from Western countries. Scientists estimate the water reserves are equivalent to 200-hundred years of the flow of the Nile River. The goal of the Gaddafi government was to make Libya a source of agricultural abundance. The project has been running for a long time. The only article in the English language press was Underground "Fossil Water" Running Out, National Geographic, May 2010 and Libya turns on the Great Man-Made River, by Marcia Merry, Printed in the Executive Intelligence Review, September 1991.
Gaddafi, speaking at the opening ceremony of the next section of the artificial water river on September 1, 2010, said: "After this achievement of the Libyan people, the US threat against Libya will double!" - `After this achievement, American threats against Libya will double... Gaddafi said further: "The US will do everything under a different pretext, but the real reason will be, as always, the desire to keep the people of Libya oppressed and in a colonial position."

Maghreb-Nachrichten on 20.03.2009 reports: “At the 5th World Water Forum in Istanbul, the Libyan authorities presented for the first time a $25 billion water supply project. The project has been called "the eighth wonder of the world" because it provides for the creation of an artificial river that would supply drinking water to the population of northern Libya. Work has been carried out since the 1980s. under the leadership of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. And now the project is 2/3 completed. The pipeline would stretch 4,000 kilometers and carry water from underground reservoirs under the desert to the north. Studies have shown that this project is more economical than alternative options. According to calculations, the water reserves will last for 4,860 years, if the states concerned, Libya, Sudan, Chad and Egypt, use the water in the way it is envisaged by the project.”

At one time, Gaddafi said that the Libyan water project would be "the strongest response to America, which accuses Libya of supporting terrorism." Mubarak was also a big supporter of this project. Are there too many coincidences? After that, all other explanations of contemporary events seem somehow not very convincing ...

These, already beginning to dry up, sections (from the satellite) after the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime

September 2010 is the date of the anniversary of the opening of the main section of the Great Man-Made River, recognized in 2008 by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest irrigation project in the world. However, for some reason, the media stubbornly does not write about it. Although in this case, the main thing in this project is not its gigantic scale, but the very purpose of this unique construction. If the project is successfully completed, this Great Man-Made River will turn desert Africa into a green continent like America or Australia. However, will this be a “happy ending”?

Water instead of oil?

When in 1953 Libya was looking for oil fields, it unexpectedly discovered huge reserves of drinking water in the south, which fed the desert oases. And only a few decades later, the Libyans realized what a treasure they had found: water, which turned out to be more expensive than black gold. The black continent, always experiencing a shortage of water and therefore having very poor vegetation, had giant water reservoirs under it - 35 thousand cubic meters of artesian water. There is so much water there that it is possible to completely flood a country like Germany, which has an area of more than 350 thousand square kilometers. The reservoir descended to a hundred meters in depth. If the entire surface of Africa is flooded with this water, then this continent will become a green and flowering garden.

This is what Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi thought about. And no wonder, because almost all of Libya is a desert. And Gaddafi came up with the idea to develop a very complex system of pipelines that would pump water from the Nubian water reservoir to the most arid regions of the country. For this purpose, experts on such projects were invited from South Korea. And in the city of El Buraika, they even built a plant that began to produce reinforced concrete pipes with a diameter of four meters. Gaddafi himself opened the construction of the pipeline in August 1984.

The eighth miracle of Gaddafi

It is no coincidence that the man-made river is listed in the Guinness Book of Records. Many generally call it the largest engineering building on our planet. And the Libyan leader himself called it the eighth wonder of the world. Today, this water supply network consists of 1,300 wells, each of which is half a kilometer deep, about four thousand kilometers of underground concrete pipes, a network of pumping stations, reservoirs, system control and monitoring centers. About seven million cubic meters of water flows through these four-meter concrete pipes of a man-made river per day, which supplies several cities at once, including the capital of Libya, then Benghazi, Gharyan, Sirte and others, and also irrigates fields planted right in the middle of the desert. The far-reaching plans of Libya included the irrigation of about 150 thousand hectares of cultivated areas, and then Libya intended to connect some other African countries to this system. And at the very end, the Libyans intended to turn their continent from eternally starving and begging into a mainland that could not only provide itself with barley, oats, wheat and corn, but also begin to export these agricultural products. The end of the project was to come in a quarter of a century. But alas...

Exile from Eden

Libya embarked on a revolutionary path. At the beginning of last year, an uprising broke out there, and Muammar Gaddafi died at the hands of the rebels in the fall of 2011. However, there are rumors that the Libyan leader was killed by the man-made river he created.

Of course, it would not be beneficial for certain major powers that were engaged in the supply of food products to the Black Continent if Africa acquired independence in this matter, overnight turning into a producer from a consumer. And secondly, already now, when the population of the planet has greatly increased, our globe has begun to consume even more fresh water, which has become a very valuable resource. Many European countries are experiencing a shortage of drinking water. And here in Africa, in some kind of Libya, a source of fresh water arose, which is able to provide everyone for several centuries.

Once, opening another section of the construction of the Great Man-Made River, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi said: “Now that we have achieved this, the United States will increase its threats against us. America will do everything so that our great work is destroyed, so that the Libyan people will always remain oppressed. This solemn meeting was attended by many heads of state located on the continent of Africa, who supported this undertaking by Gaddafi. Among them was the President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.
At the beginning of the year, Mubarak also stepped down as President due to a sudden revolution that broke out in Egypt.

Are there many coincidences? And what is interesting: when NATO troops intervened in the Libyan conflict, the first thing they began to bomb in order to “achieve peace” was precisely the Great Man-Made River, its plant that produces concrete pipes, its pumping stations and system control panels. So there is a very big doubt that the battle for oil is smoothly turning into a battle for ... water. And Gaddafi is the first casualty in this battle. And let's hope it's the last one.

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Among the latest conspiracy theories about the actions of the US government, one of the loudest and most recent is the assassination of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi not at all because of oil, but because of a grand irrigation project. The project was supposed to turn parched Africa into a prosperous continent, which is very unprofitable for those who earn billions on the hunger and thirst of Africans.

For some reason, the construction of the Great Man-Made River in Libya is deprived of media attention, despite the fact that since 2008 this structure has been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest irrigation project in the world. But what is important here is not the scale of the construction of the century, but the goals. After all, if the Libyan man-made river is completed, it will turn Africa from a desert into a fertile continent, the same as, for example, Eurasia or America. However, the whole snag is precisely in this very “if” ...

In 1953, the Libyans, trying to find sources of oil in the south of their country, discovered water: giant underground reservoirs that feed oases. Only a couple of decades later, the inhabitants of Libya realized that a much greater treasure fell into their hands than black gold. From time immemorial, Africa has been a continent suffering from drought with sparse vegetation, and here, literally under your feet, there are about 35 thousand cubic kilometers of artesian water. The corresponding volume can, for example, completely flood the territory of Germany (357,021 square kilometers), and the depth of such a reservoir will be about 100 meters. If this water is released to the surface, it will turn Africa into a blooming garden!

It was this idea that visited the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. No wonder, because the territory of Libya is more than 95% desert. Under the patronage of Gaddafi, a project was developed for a complex network of pipelines that would deliver water from the Nubian aquifer to the arid regions of the country. To implement this grandiose plan, specialists in modern technologies arrived in Libya from South Korea. A plant for the production of reinforced concrete pipes with a diameter of four meters was launched in the city of El Buraika. On August 28, 1984, Muammar Gaddafi was personally present at the beginning of the construction of the pipeline.

The eighth wonder of the world

The Great Man-Made River is not without reason called the largest irrigation project in the world. Some even consider it the largest engineering structure on the planet. Gaddafi himself called his creation the eighth wonder of the world. Now this network includes 1,300 wells 500 meters deep, four thousand kilometers of concrete pipes laid underground, a system of pumping stations, storage tanks, control and management centers. Every day, six and a half million cubic meters of water flows through the pipes and aqueducts of the man-made river, supplying the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte, Gharyan and others, as well as green fields in the middle of the former desert. In the future, the Libyans intended to irrigate 130-150 thousand hectares of cultivated land and, in addition to Libya, include other African countries in this system. Ultimately, Africa would not only cease to be a perpetually starving continent, but even itself would begin to export barley, oats, wheat and corn. The completion of the project was planned in 25 years, but…

Exile from paradise

In early 2011, Libya was engulfed in civil war, and on October 20, Muammar Gaddafi died at the hands of the rebels. But there is an opinion that the real reason for the murder of the Libyan leader was precisely his Great Man-Made River. First, a number of major powers were engaged in the supply of food to African countries. Of course, it is absolutely unprofitable for them to transform Africa from a consumer into a producer. Secondly, due to the growth of the population on the planet, fresh water is becoming an increasingly valuable resource every year. Many European states are already experiencing a shortage of drinking water. And here in the hands of Libya is a source, which, according to experts, will last for the next four to five millennia.

Once, at the solemn completion of one of the stages of the construction of the Great Man-Made River, Muammar Gaddafi said: “Now, after this achievement, the US threats against Libya will double. The Americans will do everything to ruin our labors and leave the people of Libya oppressed.” By the way, the heads of many African states were present at this celebration, and the leaders of the Black Continent supported Gaddafi's initiative. Among them was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Earlier this year, Mubarak was removed from his post as a result of a sudden outbreak of revolution in Egypt. Strange coincidence, isn't it? It is noteworthy that when NATO forces intervened in the Libyan conflict, in order to “protect the civilian population”, their aircraft attacked precisely the branches of the Great River, pumping stations and destroyed a factory producing concrete pipes.

So, I think it is highly likely that the struggle for oil is being replaced by another war - for water. And Gaddafi became the first victim of this war.

Evgenia KURLAPOVA
Secrets of the XX century No. 48 (Ukraine) 2011

The construction of the Great Man-Made River in Libya was for some reason deprived of media attention, despite the fact that since 2008 this structure has been recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the largest irrigation project in the world. But what is important here is not the scale of the construction of the century, but the goals. After all, if the Libyan man-made river is completed, it will turn Africa from a desert into a fertile continent, the same as, for example, Eurasia or America. However, the whole snag is precisely in this very “if” ...

WATER INSTEAD OF OIL

The corresponding volume can, for example, completely flood the territory of Germany (357,021 square kilometers), and the depth of such a reservoir will be about 100 meters. If this water is released to the surface, it will turn Africa into a blooming garden!

THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD

Every day, six and a half million cubic meters of water flows through the pipes and aqueducts of the man-made river, supplying the cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte, Gharyan and others, as well as green fields in the middle of the former desert. In the future, the Libyans intended to irrigate 130-150 thousand hectares of cultivated land and, in addition to Libya, include other African countries in this system. Ultimately, Africa would not only cease to be a perpetually starving continent, but even itself would begin to export barley, oats, wheat and corn. The completion of the project was planned in 25 years, but…

EXILE FROM PARADISE

4,000 kilometers of underground pipes stretched across the desert

First, a number of major powers were engaged in the supply of food to African countries. Of course, it is absolutely unprofitable for them to transform Africa from a consumer into a producer. Secondly, due to the growth of the population on the planet, fresh water is becoming an increasingly valuable resource every year. Many European states are already experiencing a shortage of drinking water. And here in the hands of Libya is a source, which, according to experts, will last for the next four to five millennia.

Mubarak was also removed from his post as a result of a sudden outbreak of revolution in Egypt.

Strange coincidence, isn't it? It is noteworthy that when NATO forces intervened in the Libyan conflict, in order to "protect civilians" their aircraft struck precisely on the branches of the Great River, pumping stations and destroyed a factory producing concrete pipes. So, I think it is highly likely that we can assume that the fight for oil is being replaced by a different one. war for water. And Gaddafi became the first victim of this war.

The largest engineering and construction project of our time is considered to be The Great Manmade River - a huge underground network of water conduits that daily supplies 6.5 million cubic meters of drinking water to the settlements of the desert regions and the coast of Libya. The project is incredibly significant for this country, but it also provides grounds for looking at the former leader of the Libyan Jamahiriya, Muammar Gaddafi, in a slightly different light than that drawn by the Western media. Perhaps this is what explains the fact that the implementation of this project was practically not covered by the media.

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The eighth wonder of the world

The total length of the underground communications of the artificial river is close to four thousand kilometers. The volume of excavated and transferred during the construction of soil - 155 million cubic meters - is 12 times more than during the creation of the Aswan Dam. And the building materials spent would be enough for the construction of 16 pyramids of Cheops. In addition to pipes and aqueducts, the system includes over 1,300 wells, most of which are over 500 meters deep. The total depth of the wells is 70 times the height of Everest.

The main branches of the water pipeline consist of concrete pipes 7.5 meters long, 4 meters in diameter and weighing more than 80 tons (up to 83 tons). And each of the more than 530 thousand of these pipes could easily serve as a tunnel for subway trains.

From the main pipes, water enters the reservoirs built near the cities with a volume of 4 to 24 million cubic meters, and local water pipelines of cities and towns begin from them. Fresh water enters the pipeline from underground sources located in the south of the country and feeds settlements concentrated mainly off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, including the largest cities in Libya - Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte. Water is abstracted from the Nubian Aquifer, the world's largest source of fossil fresh water. The Nubian aquifer is located in the eastern part of the Sahara desert over an area of more than two million square kilometers and includes 11 large underground reservoirs. The territory of Libya is located above four of them. In addition to Libya, there are several other African states on the Nubian layer, including northwestern Sudan, northeastern Chad, and most of Egypt.

The Nubian aquifer was discovered in 1953 by British geologists while searching for oil deposits. Fresh water in it is hidden under a layer of hard ferruginous sandstone with a thickness of 100 to 500 meters and, as scientists have established, accumulated underground during a period when fertile savannas stretched on the site of the Sahara, irrigated by frequent heavy rains. Most of this water was accumulated between 38,000 and 14,000 years ago, although some reservoirs are relatively recent, around 5,000 BC. When the climate of the planet changed dramatically three thousand years ago, the Sahara became a desert, but the water that had seeped into the ground over thousands of years had already been accumulated in underground horizons.

After the discovery of huge reserves of fresh water, projects for the construction of an irrigation system immediately appeared. However, the idea was realized much later and only thanks to the Government of Muammar Gaddafi. The project involved the creation of a water pipeline to deliver water from underground reservoirs from the south to the north of the country, to the industrial and more populated part of Libya. In October 1983, the Project Management was established and funding started. The total cost of the project by the start of construction was estimated at $25 billion, and the planned implementation period was at least 25 years. The construction was divided into five phases: the first - the construction of a pipe plant and a pipeline 1200 kilometers long with a daily supply of two million cubic meters of water to Benghazi and Sirte; the second is to bring pipelines to Tripoli and provide it with a daily supply of one million cubic meters of water; the third is the completion of the construction of a conduit from the Kufra oasis to Benghazi; the last two are the construction of a western branch to the city of Tobruk and the unification of branches into a single system near the city of Sirte.

The fields created by the Great Man-Made River are clearly visible from space: on satellite images they look like bright green circles scattered in the middle of gray-yellow desert areas. In the photo: cultivated fields near the Kufra oasis.

Direct construction work began in 1984 - on August 28, Muammar Gaddafi laid the first stone of the project. The cost of the first phase of the project was estimated at $5 billion. The construction in Libya of a unique, world's first plant for the production of giant pipes was implemented by South Korean specialists in modern technologies. Experts from leading world companies from the USA, Turkey, Great Britain, Japan and Germany arrived in the country. The latest equipment was purchased. For laying concrete pipes, 3,700 kilometers of roads were built, allowing heavy equipment to move. The labor of migrants from Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam was used as the main unskilled labor force.

In 1989, water entered the Ajdabiya and Grand Omar Muktar reservoirs, and in 1991, the Al Ghardabiya reservoir. The first and largest line was officially opened in August 1991 - the water supply to such large cities as Sirte and Benghazi began. Already in August 1996, regular water supply was established in the capital of Libya - Tripoli.

As a result, the government of Libya spent 33 billion dollars on the creation of the eighth wonder of the world, and the financing was carried out without international loans and IMF support. Recognizing the right to water supply as one of the fundamental human rights, the Libyan government did not charge the population for water. The government also tried not to purchase anything for the project in the countries of the "first world", but to produce everything necessary domestically. All materials used for the project were locally produced, and the plant built in the city of Al Buraika produced more than half a million pipes with a diameter of four meters from prestressed concrete.

Prior to the construction of the water pipeline, 96% of the territory of Libya was in the desert, and only 4% of the land was suitable for human life. After the full completion of the project, it was planned to supply water and cultivate 155 thousand hectares of land. By 2011, it was possible to arrange the supply of 6.5 million cubic meters of fresh water to the cities of Libya, providing it to 4.5 million people. At the same time, 70% of the water produced by Libya was consumed in the agricultural sector, 28% - by the population, and the rest - by industry. But the goal of the government was not only to fully provide the population with fresh water, but also to reduce Libya's dependence on imported food, and in the future - the country's access to completely its own food production. With the development of water supply, large agricultural farms were built to produce wheat, oats, corn and barley, which had previously only been imported. Thanks to watering machines connected to the irrigation system, circles of man-made oases and fields with a diameter of several hundred meters to three kilometers have grown in the arid regions of the country.

Measures were also taken to encourage Libyans to move to the south of the country, to farms created in the desert. However, not all of the local population moved willingly, preferring to live in the northern coastal regions. Therefore, the government of the country turned to the Egyptian peasants with an invitation to come to Libya to work. After all, the population of Libya is only 6 million people, while in Egypt - more than 80 million, living mainly along the Nile. The water pipeline also made it possible to organize in the Sahara, on the paths of camel caravans, places of rest for people and animals with water trenches (ditches) brought to the surface. Libya has even begun to supply water to neighboring Egypt.

Compared to Soviet irrigation projects implemented in Central Asia to irrigate cotton fields, the man-made river project had a number of fundamental differences. Firstly, for the irrigation of agricultural land in Libya, a huge underground, rather than surface, and relatively small, compared to the volumes taken, source was used. As everyone probably knows, the result of the Central Asian project was the Aral Sea ecological catastrophe. Secondly, in Libya, water losses during transportation were excluded, since the delivery took place in a closed way, which excluded evaporation. Deprived of these shortcomings, the created pipeline became an advanced system for supplying water to arid regions.

When Gaddafi was just starting his project, he became the object of constant ridicule from the Western media. It was then that the pejorative stamp "dream in the pipe" appeared in the mass media of the States and Britain. But 20 years later, in one of the rare materials on the success of the project, National Geographic magazine recognized it as "epoch-making". By this time, engineers from all over the world were coming to the country to gain Libyan experience in hydroengineering. Since 1990, UNESCO has been providing support and training for engineers and technicians. Gaddafi also described the water project as "the strongest response to America, which accuses Libya of supporting terrorism, saying that we are not capable of anything else."

In 1999, the Great Man-Made River was awarded the International Water Prize by UNESCO, an award given for outstanding research work on the use of water in drylands.

It's not beer that kills people...

On September 1, 2010, speaking at the opening ceremony of another section of the artificial water river, Muammar Gaddafi said: “After this achievement of the Libyan people, the US threat against Libya will double. The US will try to do everything under any other pretext, but the real reason will be to stop this achievement in order to leave the people of Libya oppressed. Gaddafi turned out to be a prophet: as a result of the civil war and foreign intervention provoked a few months after this speech, the leader of Libya was overthrown and killed without trial or investigation. In addition, as a result of the unrest in 2011, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, one of the few leaders who supported Gaddafi's project, was also removed from office.

By the start of the 2011 war, three stages of the Great Man-Made River had already been completed. The construction of the last two phases was scheduled to continue over the next 20 years. However, NATO bombing caused significant damage to the water supply system and destroyed a pipe factory for its construction and repair. Many foreign nationals who worked for decades on the project in Libya have left the country. Due to the war, water supply for 70% of the population was disrupted, and the irrigation system was damaged. And the bombing of power supply systems by NATO aircraft deprived even those regions where the pipes remained intact.

Of course, we cannot say that the real reason for killing Gaddafi was his water project, but the Libyan leader's fears were well founded: today water is becoming the planet's main strategic resource.

Unlike the same oil, water is a necessary and paramount condition for life. The average person can live no more than 5 days without water. According to the UN, by the beginning of the 2000s, more than 1.2 billion people lived in conditions of constant fresh water shortage, about 2 billion suffered from it regularly. By 2025, there will be more than 3 billion people living with permanent water scarcity. According to the United Nations Development Program in 2007, global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. At the same time, each year there are more and more large deserts around the world, and the amount of usable agricultural land in most areas is decreasing, while rivers, lakes and large underground aquifers around the world are losing their debit. At the same time, the cost of a liter of high-quality bottled water on the world market can reach several euros, which significantly exceeds the cost of a liter of 98th gasoline and, moreover, the price of a liter of crude oil. According to some estimates, freshwater companies' revenues will soon exceed those of oil companies. And a number of analytical reports on the fresh water market indicate that already today more than 600 million people (9% of the world's population) receive water from the dosimeter of private providers and at market prices.

Available fresh water resources have long been in the sphere of interests of transnational corporations. At the same time, the World Bank strongly supports the idea of privatizing fresh water sources, at the same time, in every possible way hindering water projects that dry countries are trying to implement on their own, without the involvement of Western corporations. For example, the World Bank and the IMF over the past 20 years have sabotaged several projects to improve irrigation and water supply in Egypt, blocked the construction of a canal on the White Nile in South Sudan.

Against this background, the resources of the Nubian aquifer are of great commercial interest to large foreign corporations, and the Libyan project does not seem to fit into the general scheme of private development of water resources. Look at these figures: the world's fresh water reserves, concentrated in the rivers and lakes of the Earth, are estimated at 200,000 cubic kilometers. Of these, Baikal (the largest freshwater lake) contains 23 thousand cubic kilometers, and all five Great Lakes - 22.7 thousand. The reserves of the Nubian reservoir are 150 thousand cubic kilometers, that is, they are only 25% less than all the water contained in rivers and lakes. At the same time, we must not forget that most of the rivers and lakes of the planet are heavily polluted. Scientists consider the reserves of the Nubian aquifer to be equivalent to two hundred years of the flow of the Nile River. If we take the largest underground reserves found in sedimentary rocks under Libya, Algeria and Chad, then they will be enough to cover all these areas with a 75-meter water column. According to estimates, these reserves will last for 4-5 thousand years of consumption.

Prior to the commissioning of the pipeline, the cost of demineralized sea water purchased by Libya was $3.75 per ton. The construction of its own water supply system allowed Libya to completely abandon imports. At the same time, the sum of all costs for the extraction and transportation of 1 cubic meter of water cost the Libyan state (before the war) 35 US cents, which is 11 times less than before. This was already comparable to the cost of cold tap water in Russian cities. For comparison: the cost of water in European countries is about 2 euros.

In this sense, the value of the Libyan water reserves is much higher than the value of the reserves of all its oil fields. Thus, the proven oil reserves in Libya - 5.1 billion tons - at the current price of $400 per ton will amount to about $2 trillion. Compare them with the cost of water: even based on a minimum of 35 cents per cubic meter, Libyan water reserves are 10-15 trillion dollars (with a total cost of water in the Nubian layer of 55 trillion), that is, they are 5-7 times larger than all Libyan oil reserves . If you start exporting this water in bottled form, then the amount will increase many times over.

Therefore, the allegations that the military operation in Libya was nothing more than a "war for water" have quite obvious grounds.

Risks

In addition to the political risk identified above, the Great Artificial River had at least two more. It was the first major project of its kind, so no one could predict with any certainty what would happen when the aquifers began to dry up. There were fears that the entire system would simply collapse under its own weight into the resulting voids, which would lead to large-scale sinkholes in the territories of several African countries. On the other hand, it was not clear what would happen to the existing natural oases, since many of them were originally fed by underground aquifers. Today, at least the drying up of one of the natural lakes in the Libyan oasis of Kufra is associated precisely with the overexploitation of aquifers.

But be that as it may, at the moment the artificial Libyan river is one of the most complex, most expensive and major engineering projects implemented by mankind, but grew out of the dream of a single person "to make the desert green, like the flag of the Libyan Jamahiriya."