"Colouring the outcome:
"A nation's flag is usually a projection of a political identity, and Iraq's new design is a bold departure, says Simon Jeffery"
Tuesday April 27, 2004
Guardian Unlimited (U.K.)
On the Web at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1204666,00.html
The new Iraqi flag. Photograph: Muhammed Muheisen/AP
Old Glory was hurriedly replaced with an old Iraqi flag, a pre-1991 design, which was rushed up the US army's statue-toppling hoist. The Iraqi flag was by that stage almost as recognisable as the Americans'. The red, white and black stripes with the Arabic script and three green stars had, after all, been pitted against the stars and stripes for many months before.
But that flag may be going the same way as the Soviet hammer and sickle, the orange, white and blue South African flag, and countless others swept away with the end of old regimes. The US-appointed Iraqi governing council has approved a radically different new design. Drawn by Iraqi artist Rifat al-Chaderchi, the two blue stripes represent the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Iraq's Mesopotamian heartland, the yellow is for the Kurds and the crescent for Islam.
It has been met with some bewilderment in Iraq, largely because it resembles the Israeli flag more than any other. It also breaks the bonds between Iraq and its neighbours. Green, black and white, said to represent Islamic caliphates, are combined with red, the colour of the Arab revolt against the Ottoman Turkish empire, to form the pan-Arab colours. Jordan, Kuwait, Syria and Sudan all have them on their flags...
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