DUBAI: Government officials and NGOs are taking the initiative to restore vital historical sites across the Middle East after years of destruction by militant groups.
The UN cultural agency UNESCO recently announced that the reconstruction
of Al-Nouri Mosque — which was blown up by Daesh in June 2017 — in the
Iraqi city of Mosul will start at the beginning of next year.
Launched in 2018, the mosque restoration plan will be the most
eye-catching part of a $100 million UNESCO-led heritage reconstruction
called “Revive the Spirit of Mosul.”
The timeline of the restoration plan for the 12th-century mosque, famed
for its leaning minaret, was finalized during a meeting in Paris between
UNESCO and Iraqi government officials.
“What they call the Arab Spring is really the Arab Fall because many
historic sites in Iraq, Syria and Libya have been erased,” said Samir
Saddi, founder and director of the Beirut-based architecture and design
institute ARCADE.
“The destruction is very upsetting because it’s not only about heritage
itself as much as it is about these monuments and their meaning in
social and religious life.”
Saddi sees restoration in the Middle East as a costly, recurrent
endeavor as extremists have repeatedly targeted historical monuments due
to their importance to local communities.
“You can kill a person, but here you’re erasing centuries of cultural
and religious meaning. It’s very important to restore these buildings,”
he said.
“What’s also important is what should be done in terms of educating
people and creating awareness on how to maintain these monuments.”
Saddi said the challenge for the Middle East is not only restoration but
also how to make sure this kind of destruction does not happen again,
and how to preserve monuments and traditional architecture.
“It’s really the biggest subject because you can restore the mosque, but
what about the daily destruction of heritage in terms of habitat and
nature?” he said.
Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi declared a caliphate from Al-Nouri
Mosque in the summer of 2014, only for his own fighters to blow it up
three years later as Iraqi government forces closed in.
The mosque was not the first victim of Daesh’s cultural nihilism. In
January 2017, Daesh fighters destroyed the Roman theater in the Syrian
city of Palmyra — a historical landmark dating back to the 2nd century
AD — and other monuments in the area.