Water Get Enemy

What has been on many peoples’ lips but not often uttered is that Western nations are after control of Libya’s oil and gas reserves, which are considerable and thus create a blocking move to Chinese energy advances on the African continent: interest free loans and economic grants issues to various African nations in return for preferential oil exports. China already imports over 100 billion barrels from Africa annually. Europe, as a hungry consumer of oil and gas would jump at the chance to have vast stores of energy at its foot. So it may be inferred that the West plan to be rid of Gaddafi and take off with Libya’s natural resources.

Yet one issue has been left off the list of security intervention and ‘noble humanitarian aid’: Libya’s water resources. The Middle East has three percent of the world’s population yet, only one percent of the world’s fresh water reserves according to a World Bank Report from 1996. But this is in part due to the fact that the Nubian-Sandstone Aquifer, which covers an area of 2.2 million square km under northeastern Africa, not been exploited and extensively welled to date. Libya, which has constructed a £15.5 billion water network – The Great Manmade River (GMMR) – that supplies the nations major coastal settlements, taps into this huge natural resource in an area of fresh water scarcity and has the potential to ease the plight of drought in the area if managed right.
With a supply infrastructure already in place, when and if the spoils of the Pentagon coined Operation Odyssey Dawn and enforced no fly zone over Libya are cut up the contract for control of the water network invariably will be one of the jewels in the crown of the Western plunder.

The prospect of the Nubian-Sandstone Aquifer providing the Middle East with a water supply that alleviates its arid state is a real one. An infrastructure for extraction exists, all that would be needed for irrigation of many areas of the Middle East is control of Libya, privatisation contracts of the GMMR and international treaties.
A major actor in the rally to arms over Libya has been French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy championed the U.N. sanctioned no-fly zone and subsequent intervention, as a vehicle to boost his popularity in the private sector in France going into a reelection campaign, this ‘noble’ intervention, if successful, could well swing votes Sarkozy’s way. France after all is home to Veolia, one of the world’s largest water and waste management company whose scope is truly global. Look for who has the most to gain from the privatization of Libya’s water resources and the chances are that the spoils when dished out will be heading France’s direction.