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Saudi Farasan Islands Close to Being Registered in UNESCO’s MAB

Saudi Farasan Islands Close to Being Registered in UNESCO’s MAB
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Saudi Farasan Islands Close to Being Registered in UNESCO’s MAB

Saudi Farasan Islands Close to Being Registered in UNESCO’s MAB

The poet of the Farasan Islands, Ibrahim Moftah, describing the people of Farasan’s love for the archipelago, its beaches that captivate minds, natural beauty, and the rich heritage that goes beyond its physical form, the Saudi poet and writer says that as soon as he leaves Farasan: "Life has been being sucked out of him."

Farasan, the archipelago of more than 200 islets on the Red Sea, is in the far southwest of Saudi Arabia. The area is considered a cultural and tourist treasure because of its virgin islands, proximity to the strategically significant Bab al-Mandab strait and its many palaces and heritage sites, which had previously been a meeting point and place to rest for commercial and military ships. Also, a fishing festival is held annually; Al-Harid began decades ago but has been canceled this year because of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

These qualities, the uniqueness of its biodiversity and topography, led Saudi Arabia to set a plan to develop and preserve it and its culture, thereby allowing the “Farasan Islands Marine Sanctuary” to meet the requirements to become the first Saudi natural reserve registered in the Man and the Biosphere Program (MAB) at UNESCO.

"We are working on our Twitter account," tweets Minister of Culture and chairman of the board of directors of the Saudi Heritage Preservation Society Prince Badr bin Farhan. "Our country is dear because of its people and its natural and cultural diversity.”

Each island contains historical imprints and a heritage dating back to ancient periods set by cruise ships left by imperial ships, in addition to an industrial history, having been the German coal depot during World War II. All this gives these islands, which have an estimated total area of 1050 square kilometers, historical significance.

The over 12,000 residents of the area live almost exclusively on the main Farasan Island and have a unique maritime lifestyle. Ships and sailboats are major means of transportation to those who reside by the diverse islands on the colorful shining water which sits on top of the coral reefs, alongside diverse marine life, including whales, dolphins, sharks, turtles.

The Saudi Society for the Preservation of Heritage is working to register the Farasan Islands on UNESCO’s MAB before the registration deadline in September.

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Palestinians in Syria Flock to Cemetery Off-Limits under Assad

People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)
People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)
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Palestinians in Syria Flock to Cemetery Off-Limits under Assad

People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)
People pray by the grave of a relative in a damaged cemetery at the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees in the south of Damascus on December 14, 2024. (AFP)

In a war-ravaged Palestinian refugee camp in Syria, Radwan Adwan was stacking stones to rebuild his father's grave, finally able to return to Yarmuk cemetery after Bashar al-Assad's fall.

"Without the fall of the regime, it would have been impossible to see my father's grave again," said 45-year-old Adwan.

"When we arrived, there was no trace of the grave."

It was his first visit there since 2018, when access to the cemetery south of Damascus was officially banned.

Assad's fall on December 8, after a lightning offensive led by opposition factions, put an end to decades of iron-fisted rule and years of bloody civil war that began with repression of peaceful anti-government protests in 2011.

Yarmuk camp fell to the opposition early in the war before becoming an extremist stronghold. It was bombed and besieged by Assad's forces, emptied of most of its residents and reduced to ruins before its recapture in 2018.

Assad's ouster has allowed former residents to return for the first time in years.

Back at the cemetery, Adwan's mother Zeina sat on a small metal chair in front of her husband's gravesite.

She was "finally" able to weep for him, she said. "Before, my tears were dry."

"It's the first time that I have returned to his grave for years. Everything has changed, but I still recognize where his grave is," said the 70-year-old woman.

Yarmuk camp, established in the 1950s to house Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their land after Israel's creation, had become a key residential and commercial district over the decades.

Some 160,000 Palestinians lived there alongside thousands of Syrians before the country's conflict erupted in 2011.

Thousands fled in 2012, and few have found their homes still standing in the eerie wasteland that used to be Yarmuk.

Along the road to the cemetery, barefoot children dressed in threadbare clothes play with what is left of a swing set in a rubble-strewn area that was once a park.

- 'Spared no one' -

A steady stream of people headed to the cemetery, looking for their loved ones' gravesites after years.

"Somewhere here is my father's grave, my uncle's, and another uncle's," said Mahmud Badwan, 60, gesturing to massive piles of grey rubble that bear little signs of what may lie beneath them.

Most tombstones are broken.

Near them lay breeze blocks from adjacent homes which stand empty and open to the elements.

"The Assad regime spared neither the living nor the dead. Look at how the ruins have covered the cemetery. They spared no one," Badwan said.

There is speculation that the cemetery may also hold the remains of famed Israeli spy Eli Cohen and an Israeli solider.

Cohen was tried and hanged for espionage by the Syrians in 1965 after he infiltrated the top levels of the government.

Camp resident Amina Mounawar leaned against the wall of her ruined home, watching the flow of people arriving at the cemetery.

Some wandered the site, comparing locations to photos on their phones taken before the war in an attempt to locate graves in the transformed site.

"I have a lot of hope for the reconstruction of the camp, for a better future," said Mounawar, 48, as she offered water to those arriving at the cemetery.