Iraqi sacred site to be rebuilt


Reconstruction work will begin next month on a revered shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra blown up in the current conflict, UN cultural body Unesco says.
The al-Askari shrine, one of Iraq's most sacred Shia sites, was partly destroyed in two attacks over two years by suspected Sunni militants.
Thousands have died in sectarian violence triggered by the first attack.
The rebuilding work will be carried out by a Turkish company, and is being funded mostly by the EU and Unesco.
Officials said the work would begin after the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends in the middle of October.
The project is expected to cost $16m (£7.9m), of which $8m will come from the EU, $5m from Unesco and $3m from the Iraqi government.
Haqi al-Hakim, an aide to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, told the Associated Press news agency the initial phase of clearing the site could take 10 months.
The February 2006 attack on the shrine, in which its golden dome was destroyed, sparked violence which has led to thousands of deaths over the past 18 months.
A second attack, in June 2007, saw its ancient minarets destroyed.
Both attacks were blamed on Sunni militants.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle ... 020221.stm






About UNESCO:

UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was founded on 16 November 1945. For this specialized United Nations agency, it is not enough to build classrooms in devastated countries or to publish scientific breakthroughs. Education, Social and Natural Science, Culture and Communication are the means to a far more ambitious goal : to build peace in the minds of men.

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ ... N=201.html
Somebody help me to understand why funds from the rest of the world are being spent to restore what the warring factions of the Muslim faith saw fit to destroy. Wouldn't those UN and EU dollars be better spent feeding the starving masses or protecting African (and other) peoples from genocide? Aren't some of those UN (UNESCO) funds US dollars gleaned from the pockets of US taxpayers?

Does anyone besides me see this as further enshrining Islam as a world religion? I wonder if Christians ever get financial support from these world bodies when a natural disaster or civil conflict strikes their holy sites? How about the Jews or the Hindus or the Buddists?