Iraq flag

The flag of Iraq has had five different designs since its first adoption in 1922. Its current version was officially adopted on January 22, 2008 and consists of three equal horizontal bands in red on the top, middle white, and bottom black. In the center of the white band there is an inscription in Kufic calligraphy and green color of the phrase "الّٰله اكبر (Allahu Akbar)", which means "Allah is the most big". Unlike most national flags, the Iraqi flag is flown with the right side facing the flagpole.

This flag was established by the government of that country for a provisional period of one year, in order to find a solution to the controversy generated in Iraq about the use of the flag. The flag used previously had been instituted by Saddam Hussein, and once his government fell after the Iraq War, various communities (such as the Kurds) that had been brutally repressed by said regime, rejected the use of the national emblem.

History

First flags

In 1920, the territory of present-day Iraq became the British Mandate of Mesopotamia after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. A flag was adopted at the birth of this new semi-independent State and, inspired by the colors of the Arab Rebellion, it was made up of three horizontal stripes in black, white and green colors with a red trapezoid next to the mast, which in some variants could become a triangle. Inside the trapezoid, two seven-pointed white stars were located that represented the fourteen provinces that made up the country at that time.

The flag and its colors were closely associated with the Hashemites, the leaders of the Arab Rebellion and who would become the Iraqi royal family when Iraq gained full independence in 1932. The Hashemites were also rulers of the neighboring Kingdom of Jordan, which explains the great similarity between the Iraqi flag of that time and the current Jordanian flag. Currently, this flag is used by some monarchist movements inside and outside Iraq.

The Kingdom of Iraq had a turbulent development, only lasting from 1932 to 1958. In 1958, King Faysal II was overthrown and executed by a group of revolutionaries led by Abdul Karim Qasim, who established a republic. With the end of the monarchy, a new flag was designed to remove the monarchical symbolism from it and represent the various nations that make up Iraq. The horizontal bands became vertical to represent pan-Arabism and a yellow sun representing the Kurdish minority and a red star in homage to the Assyrian minority were integrated into the central white stripe.

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  Flag of the Kingdom of Iraq (1921-1959)

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  Flag of Iraq (1959-1963)

The Baathist Flag

Qasim was overthrown on February 8 by forces of the Arab Socialist Baath Party prone to pan-Arabism and the creation of a single Arab state led by the Egyptian Gamal Abdel Nasser.

A new flag was adopted taking up only the pan-Arabic colors. The flag consisted of three horizontal stripes (red, white and black) and three green stars were located in the central band. Originally, the flag was designed following the patterns of the United Arab Republic, a state formed by the union of Egypt and Syria led by Nasser between 1958 and 1961, and whose flag included two green stars that represented both territories. In 1963, with the rise to power of the Baathists, talks for the reunification of the UAR, including Iraq, were resumed. The new Iraqi flag, including three stars instead of two, would be the proposed flag for the new supranational state, briefly being adopted by Syria. Although the talks ultimately did not come to fruition, the flag remained as the Iraqi emblem and eventually the meaning of the three stars was changed to represent each of the terms of the Baathist motto "Freedom, Unity, Socialism" ( Wahda, Hurriyah, Ishtirakiyah in Arabic).

The design of the Iraqi flag would join a series of flags that would have similar characteristics, all representing (at least originally) the desire for the formation of a single Arab state. The flags of Egypt, Syria and Yemen have these characteristics.

On August 2, 1990, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered the invasion of the nearby emirate of Kuwait, which would later lead to the outbreak of the Gulf War. On January 11, 1991, the flag would be modified to include the takbir (or declaration of faith of Islam) consisting of the phrase Allahu akbar, which means "Allah (God) is great." » between the stars and that would have been written in Hussein's own handwriting. The inclusion of this religious phrase, despite the secularism that had previously characterized Baathism, is widely seen as a way to rally support within the Islamic world during the Gulf War against the US-led coalition.

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  Flag of Iraq (1963-1991)

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  Flag of Iraq (1991-2004)

Transition

In 2003, a military coalition led by US troops managed to overthrow the dictatorial government of Saddam Hussein in the so-called Iraq War. With the end of the Baathist government, one of the objectives of the new transitional authorities was to eliminate the symbols that commemorate that time, the flag being among them.

On April 26, 2004, the Iraqi Governing Council announced the approval of a new flag after receiving more than thirty proposals. Designed by a London-based Iraqi architect, Rifat al-Chaderchi, the flag had a completely new design with respect to the previous ones: a celestial crescent on a white background (representing Islam and peace) under which hung two horizontal stripes of blue (symbolizing Mesopotamia and its two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates) separated by a golden stripe representing Kurdistan.

Although the new flag was designed to integrate the various nationalities existing in the country and to mark the beginning of a new "era," a series of protests broke out in Iraq against to the adoption of the new flag. The flag was burned by insurgents in Fallujah one day before its supposed official adoption, on April 28. Among the reasons for the rejection of the flag were the fact that it was chosen by a body designated by the US occupation and that did not consider the opinion of the population, the abandonment of the traditional Arab colors in favor of blue tones similar to those of the flag of Israel (the only country in the entire Middle East whose flag has that color) and the lack of representativeness of other ethnic groups (such as Assyrians, Christians and Turkmen).

The rejection of the new flag forced the suspension of adoption and, later, it was completely discarded. A new flag was made official on June 28, 2004 when the Interim Government Council took office. In said emblem, the takbir was written with Kufic-type Arabic calligraphy and not with Saddam Hussein's manuscript of the flag, thus eliminating the symbology of the overthrown dictatorial regime.

This change, however, did not end claims that the pavilion remained a symbol of Hussein's oppression of various groups in the country. For these reasons, the government of the Kurdish Autonomous Region decided to prohibit the use of the Iraqi flag on its territory and, instead, the flag used between 1959 and 1963 was adopted as the national symbol.

Due to these controversies, the government of Iraq decided to adopt a new provisional flag, on January 28, 2008, completely removing the Baathist stars and leaving only the central takbir next to the tricolor stripes.. The flag would last one year and would be replaced by a new one in 2009 that contains some symbol that represents the minority peoples that inhabit the country. This new design would be accepted by the Kurdistan government, which allowed its use in the territory under its jurisdiction.

On July 15, 2008, the Iraqi government announced the contest to select the new national flag. Until the end of September 2008, the government would receive the various proposals and then choose three designs to propose to parliament, which would select the winner at the end of that year. However, this was not finally achieved.

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  Flag proposed by Rifat al-Chaderchi (2004)

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  Iraq Flag (2004-2008)

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  Initial proposal for 2008

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  Second proposal for 2008

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  Flag since 2008.