Mubarak's Dream Remains Just That In Egypt's Desert Originally
published on Tue July 10, 2012 8:57 am In the middle of southern
Egypt's windy desert, wheat fields stretch as far as the eye can
see on a 24,000-acre farm. It's part of a grandiose project
called Toshka that was dreamed up 15 years ago by the government
of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's authoritarian leader who ruled the
country for three decades before being ousted last year. A key
component of the Toshka project was to cultivate a half-million
acres of farmland in the desert to deal with Egypt's rising
demand for food. To irrigate the land, millions of dollars were
spent building pumping stations and canals to draw water from
nearby Lake Nasser, a vast man-made lake created by the
construction of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River. But
mismanagement, corruption and Mubarak's eventual ouster have
left Toshka and other projects languishing. Now, as economic
hardship rises in Egypt, there's renewed interest in — and
debate over — the Toshka project. Bui