Efforts are underway to bulldoze historic sites in an area in Bahrain known for its links to ancient civilisations, based on complaints that they have not been developed for tourism.

Municipal councillors in the Northern Governorate want to flatten burial mounds and structures dating back up to 4,000 years, arguing the land was needed for modernisation projects, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

They are proposing new homes and infrastructure projects at sites that have so far been deemed off limits due to their heritage value.

Northern Municipal Council chairman Mohammed Buhamood, who is spearheading the campaign, argued heritage chiefs had failed to properly develop areas of archaeological importance.

“History would be of significance when promoted and marketed properly to tourists, but when they (historic sites) are just there for nothing, they should be bulldozed,” Buhamood said yesterday (July 13).

“There are around 60,000 families on the Housing Ministry’s waiting lists, but a huge part of Hamad Town is fenced off because it has thousands of burial mounds that I didn’t see anyone visit in 29 years of living there.

“Another location with burial mounds that no-one cares about is Buri. There is another site in Al Qaddam, off Budaiya Highway, and no-one knows why it is fenced off. It could be removed immediately.

“We don’t need such huge spaces kept aside for history – anything symbolic in a small area would be enough.”

Buhamood said the council was asking the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities (BACA), which is now under the Works, Municipalities and Urban Planning Affairs Ministry, to suggest which sites are important and should be preserved.

“Whether their plans include excavation or direct bulldozing, we need to know direction,” he said.

Issues

“To be honest no-one cares about history when it doesn’t benefit them.

“In other cities like Rome locals are employed as tourist guides or assistants and administrative staff at historic locations, while others are given investments.

“Here they are being given nothing.

“BACA has to present us with something substantial and logical. I am reasonable person when things are sensible, it wouldn’t be an issue.

“It is an issue when historical locations are neglected and unattended, yet people are not allowed to touch them.”

However, he singled out the A’ali Royal Burial Mounds as a site that should be preserved and developed into an international attraction.

“I have heard about plans to install lighting that would glitter at night at the mounds, but I didn’t see anything and nothing was presented to us,” he said.

“Even A’ali’s site is damaged, with people removing barbed wire fences around the mounds and trespassing – taking stones to block roads in confrontations with police, which has been never fixed.”

An application to recognise 11 burial mound locations, stretching 25km from the centre of the country to the northern coast, as a World Heritage Site was submitted to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) by Bahrain six years ago.

That included the Buri mounds, which along with those in Dar Kulayb and Karzakan were described in Bahrain’s application as: “The highest level of density of burial mounds in one field and the highest density of mound fields in a relatively limited territory.”

Bahrain hopes the mounds qualify for World Heritage Site status based on Unesco criteria that they “bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilisation which is living or which has disappeared”.

It argued that each of the 11 sites “provides essential archaeological and scientific data defining the unique funerary practices of the Dilmun and Tylos civilisations”.

However, the Northern Municipal Council in April demanded that around 100 historic burial mounds in Hamad Town be bulldozed to make way for a new road.

BACA officials could not be reached for comment. - TradeArabia News Service