The toman diaries

The Iraqi flag

søndag, juli 04, 2004

I remember reading about the CPA making a new flag for iraq that would indicate "new times". But noone has yet started using the proposal, and it is disputed wether there actually was a competition about the design at all, although both the competition and the new flag was announced by reuters. I guess reuters got it from "official channels" in the CPA.

According to The Independent, the flag was designed by a London resident Iraqi named Rifat Chadirji. He is the brother of a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, and says he never heard about any flag design competition: "My brother just called me and asked me to design a flag on behalf of the IGC. Nobody told me about a competition".

The flag symbolizes "a new iraq", eufrat and tigris, and the kurdish population of iraq. IT has colors that are not in the arab tradition, rather it has Israeli colors which is not very welcome... The kurdish part is certainly interesting, and says something about who designed it, and possibly the reason for designing it. The kurds have been suppressed by Saddam Hussain, but they are not by any means a majority in Iraq. (Although they are the biggest minority.) - If you were to design a new Norwegian flag, would you include a reference only to the minority sami population? Thought not.