In 1984, Libya began building a 4,000-kilometer “river” beneath the Sahara; decades later, the incomplete network still supplies millions with water

Libya is one of the driest countries on Earth, but beneath its desert lies a network of underground pipes, some 4,000 kilometers long, built to carry ancient water from the deep south to the crowded coastal cities in the north. According to the Middle East Institute's recent analysis of the project, Libya's Great Man-Made River, which still supplies a large part of the country’s population, is incomplete and vulnerable more than four decades after ground was first broken. For Americans watching groundwater levels drop across the Southwest, Libya's gamble is worth paying attention to.

Why Libya built it in the first place