IN 1998, the Mubarak regime announced that it would build the largest water-pumping station in the world, taking Nile water from behind the Aswan High Dam reservoir to irrigate portions of the southwestern desert. The government declared it would convert millions of acres from desert to arable land, transforming the largely arid New Valley province into cultivated fields. The goal of this massive exercise in land reclamation was ostensibly to attract Egypt’s multiplying population from the densely populated “old” Nile River Valley and Delta to the desert periphery. The New Valley Project, or Toshka Project as it was usually called in the Arabic press, was thus justified in terms of a perceived demographic imperative. The “Mubarak Pumping Station” began operation in 2005, with twentyfour turbines capable of pumping 1.2 million cubic meters of water per hour. 1 By winter 2008, however, demand for irrigation water was so limited that only one of the installed turbines was in use at a time. Out of an initial 540,000 acres targeted for reclamation, agribusiness managers in the area reported that only a few thousand were under cultivation. 2 Far from being a celebrated achievement of the Mubarak government, the New Valley Project