A Frenchman who can see water beneath the Sahara

Out here in the sandy moonscape of eastern Chad, you don't expect to see a diminutive Frenchman with an Indiana Jones hat marching around, muttering, and staring at his global-positioning device.

But Alain Gachet has come here to outdo generations of witch doctors, water diviners, and PhDs. He aims to pinpoint, with scientific certainty, the right places to dig the costly wells that pull precious water from beneath the sand.

And this isn't some academic exercise. About 200,000 refugees have fled to Chad from Sudan's violent Darfur region. They each need four gallons of water a day, the United Nations says - or a total of about 25 swimming pools in a land that gets no rain for months on end. At a time when nearly 1 out of every 5 people in the world is without adequate drinking water, Mr. Gachet could help save countless lives.

Gachet says he's up to the task, due, oddly enough, to the space shuttle and the end of the cold war. Working in his 15th-century chateau in France, he fused together an unprecedented set of maps, including newly released topo- graphic ones from the shuttle and previously unavailable radar ones that peer 20 yards underground. Now he's put the data into his GPS device. When he says, "Dig here!" aid workers listen.

So far, the half dozen wells drilled under his direction have hit water. His data has also been key, UN officials say, in picking new sites for refugee camps. Several older camps were set up far from water, causing great complications for refugees and aid workers.

Gachet's work is "a revolution - in terms of water, the most important thing to happen in 20 years," says Ben Harvey, a water specialist for the International Rescue Committee at the Oure Cassoni refugee camp near the northern Chadian town of Bahai.

Mr. Harvey notes that the site for the Oure Cassoni camp, home to about 17,000 refugees, was chosen because it's near a small lake. Yet it's also dangerously close to the Chad-Sudan border, making the refugees susceptible to further attacks. Janjaweed militia, who've been implicated in the killing of 30,000 to 50,000 Sudanese civilians in Darfur, regularly come to water their horses at the lake. It makes Oure Cassoni a risky place - but one that, at least, has water. Gachet's technology is allowing camps to be set up in safer locations away from the border.

Even now, during the rainy season, good water is hard to find. Rivers, for instance, may be full, but they can be contaminated by animal carcasses. A recent World Health Organization survey found that 6,000 to 10,000 people are dying in Darfur each month, citing lack of clean water as one of the major reasons.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council on Saturday passed a new US-sponsored resolution, saying that Sudan hasn't fully complied with previous resolutions and threatening sanctions against Sudan's leaders and its burgeoning oil industry if the government doesn't quell the violence in Darfur.

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