Flag of Iraq

Since the 1958 Iraqi coup d'état, the various republican governments of Iraq have used a number of different flags, all featuring the pan-Arab colors of green, black, white, and red. The current official and internationally recognized flag of Iraq (علم العراق) was adopted in 2008 as a temporary compromise, and consists of the three equal horizontal red, white, and black stripes of the Arab Liberation Flag, that was first used by Gamal Abdel Nasser during the Egyptian Revolution, with the takbīr written in green in the Kufic script that was originally added by Saddam Hussein following the Gulf War.
This basic tricolour has been in use since its adoption on 31 July 1963, with several changes to the green symbols in the central white stripes; the most recent version adopted on 22 January 2008 bears the takbīr rendered in dark green and removes the three green stars present since 1963. The flag was initially meant to be temporary but has remained the official flag long past originally intended.
Valid for Iraqi flags 1963–present
The Abbasid Revolution against the Umayyad Caliphate adopted black for its rāyaʾ for which their partisans were called the musawwids. Their rivals chose other colours in reaction; among these, forces loyal to Marwan II adopted red. The choice of black as the colour of the Abbasid Revolution was already motivated by the "black standards out of Khorasan" tradition associated with the Mahdi. The contrast of white vs. black as the Fatimid vs. Abbasid dynastic colour over time developed in white as the colour of Shia Islam and black as the colour of Sunni Islam. After the revolution, Islamic apocalyptic circles admitted that the Abbasid banners would be black but asserted that the Mahdi's standard would be black and larger. Anti-Abbasid circles cursed "the black banners from the East", "first and last".
Starting in 1534, the territory that is now Iraq was administered by the Ottoman Empire. In 1844, the Ottoman Empire had adopted a national flag as part of the Tanzimat reforms, this flag was used in Iraq until the Arab Revolt, and inspired the flags of the modern Iraqi Turkmen.
The first flag of modern Iraq was in Mandatory Iraq, and was adopted in 1921. It was a black-white-green horizontal flag, with a red triangle extending from the mast side, inspired by the flag of the Arab Revolt. It was soon changed to a new version with a red trapezoid replacing the triangle containing two, seven-point white stars denoting the Tigris River and the Euphrates River. Both designs also reflected the newly installed Hashemite Dynasty in Iraq (originally from the Hejaz in the Arabian Peninsula), who had played a leading role in the Arab Revolt. As such, it was similar to the flags of Hashemite Jordan, and the short-lived Kingdom of Hejaz. The new flag continued to be used in the Kingdom of Iraq.
In 1958, in response to the merger of Egypt and Syria in the United Arab Republic, the two Hashemite kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan established the Arab Federation, a confederation of the two states. The flag of the union was essentially that of Jordan but without seven pointed star in the red chevron. This flag is identical to the flag of Palestine adopted in 1964, and almost identical to the flag of the Ba'ath Party. The union lasted less than six months, being terminated by the Iraqi Revolution of 1958 in July.
Following the Revolution of 14 July 1958, led by Abd al-Karim Qasim, which abolished the Hashemite monarchy in Iraq and turned the country into a republic, Iraq adopted a new flag (Law 102 of 1959) that consisted of a black-white-green vertical tricolour, with a red eight-pointed star with a yellow circle at its centre. The black, white, green, and red are the Pan-Arab colors, representing pan-Arabism, with the yellow Kurdish Sun in the middle to represent the Iraqi Kurds, surrounded by the red Star of Ishtar to represent the indigenous Assyrians.
After Qassim was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party in 1963, the new government, led by the Nasserist Abdul Salam Arif (under the influence of what would become the Arab Socialist Union), adopted a modified version of the Arab Liberation Flag as the new flag of Iraq on 31 July 1963 (Law 28 of 1963). This horizontal tricolour of red, white, and black bands (a subset of the Pan-Arab colours, first used in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952) formed the basis of the flag of the United Arab Republic (UAR). Though the UAR broke up in 1961, hopes for Arab unity persisted. As such, whereas the UAR flag had two green stars in the white band, signifying its two members (Egypt and Syria), the new Iraqi flag had three stars, symbolising the aspiration that Iraq would join with Egypt and Syria in a new union. Sharing this goal, Syria adopted the new Iraqi flag as its own later that same year. This remained the flag of Syria until 1971, when the green stars were replaced by the Hawk of Quraish as the Coat of arms of Syria.
During the presidency of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi Flag Law No. 28 of 1963 was replaced by Flag Law No. 33 of 1986, which did not alter the flag but changed the meaning of the three stars from their original geographic meaning to representations of the three tenets of the Ba'ath Party motto: wahda, hurriyah, ishtirakiyah (unity, freedom and socialism).
On 13 January 1991, the flag was modified by Flag Law No. 6 of 1991. At the instigation of President Saddam Hussein, the takbīr (the phrase Allahu akbar, meaning "God is the greatest" in Arabic) was added in green between the stars. The form of the takbīr was said to be Saddam's own handwriting. Many interpreted the addition of the sacred Islamic text as an attempt to garner wartime support from previously outlawed religious Iraqi leaders, to stop the disrespect of the Iraqi flag in Iraqi-occupied Kuwait, and to bolster the Iraqi government's Islamist credentials in the period immediately preceding the Gulf War. Despite this, the flag without the Takbir remained legal and remained in co-official use until 2004, most commonly as a civil ensign or in places where a less religiously sensitive flag was needed. It was also sometimes used by Iraqi opposition prior to the U.S. Invasion such as the Iraqi National Accord, as the "true flag" of Iraq, viewing the new text added to the flag as an example of Saddam’s authorian tendencies by adding his personal imprint onto the national flag, which had been the most nationally and internationally recognized symbol of Iraq for decades. This use contrasts its post-2003 use as a symbol of loyalism towards Saddam and the Ba'athist government. The version without the Takbir was never officially used by the American administration.
As with other flags inscribed with Arabic script, the hoist is to the right of the obverse (front) of the flag. The hamza over the alif of “Allah” in the main variant seems to be a spelling error according to formal Arabic grammar, but it is a common mistake found in many texts. This flag remerged during the 2012–2013 Iraqi protests as a symbol of Sunni Iraqi identity (mainly among ethnic Arab and Turkmen), and remains in use by Sunni Iraqi diaspora worldwide. The flag also remains in use by rebel groups such as the Free Iraqi Army, the Naqshbandi Army, the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance, the Supreme Command for Jihad and Liberation and the Anbar Tribal Council, often swapping between the original 1963 and takbir versions of the flag. The stars of this flag still remain a recognizable symbol of Iraq, as seen in the logo of the Iraqi Communist Party. Because of the associations between these movements and the flag, the flag is commonly retroactively known or perceived as being a Ba'athist flag, Saddamist flag or Sunni flag, despite being an inherently non-sectarian symbol with Nasserist origins that had widespread use long before the rule of Saddam Hussein.
The flag also continued to be used as the design of the Iraqi national flag on multiple emoji design sets including the OpenMoji project and on Huawei devices (both until 2024) and still remains the design of the flag on sites such as Steam, despite not being in official use for over a decade.
Owing to differing views on a flag proposed by the United States-appointed administration, and the prevailing opposition to an outright abandonment of the current Iraqi flag, a compromise measure was adopted by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi interim administration in 2004. The basic form of the existing flag was retained; however, the takbīr was rendered in traditional stylized Kufic script, as opposed to the handwriting of Saddam Hussein.
The modified flag was unveiled at the ceremony marking the technical "handover" of power from the Coalition Provisional Authority occupation forces to the U.S.-appointed administration on 28 July 2004.
Despite this measure, the Kurdish population still opposed the flag, as it contained the three stars associated with the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein, and thus, the atrocities that were committed upon the Kurds by the Ba'athists. This eventually led to the removal of the three stars in 2008, which also provoked some criticism among non-Kurdish Iraqis, who flew it in protest.
On 22 January 2008, the Council of Representatives of Iraq approved its new design for the national flag, confirmed by Law 9 of 2008 as the compromising temporary replacement for the Ba'athist Saddam-era flag. In this current version, the three stars were removed, leaving only the takbīr (which confused some Iraqis, as this was the part added to the flag directly by Saddam), with the two words of the takbīr being brought closer together and rendered in bold, and corrected the previous spelling of Allah (ألله to الله). The removal of the three stars was demanded by the Kurdish population of Iraq, who associated the three stars with the Al-Anfal genocide. But their removal provoked criticism among non-Kurdish Iraqis, mainly Iraqi Arabs, who argued that the stars did not represent the Ba'athist regime, and the city of Fallujah refused to fly the temporary flag that year unless instructed otherwise. The parliament intended for the new design to last one year, after which a final decision on the flag would be made. However, the flag law was reviewed in parliament on 30 August 2009.
The Iraqi flag consists of four colours: red, white, green and black, inspired by the poetic verse of Safi al-Din al-Hilli: "Our actions are bright, our battlefields are dark, our lands are green, and our swords are red with the blood of our enemies".
The flag is in the form of a rectangle, the width of which is two-thirds of its length, and it consists of three horizontal bands of equal dimensions, the top in red, the middle in white, and the bottom in black, and the words ʾAllāhu ʾakbar "الله اكبر" in Kufic script coloured green is in the middle of the middle white rectangle. The ratio of flag is 2:3.
Following the military invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003, the Iraqi government was overthrown, and the Ba'ath party was outlawed. Strong speculation followed that the U.S. government would press for a change in the Iraqi flag to remove its pan-Arab symbolism, and to make a definitive break with the period of Ba'athist rule. To a degree, this view was shared by some groups in Iraq. In addition to some displeasure among Iraqis who had suffered under Saddam Hussein to retaining national symbols used by his government, there was also strong aversion to the flag from Iraq's Kurdish minority, who resented its evocation of pan-Arabism. However, Iraqi opponents of changing the flag argued that since the flag had been used since 1963, long before Saddam Hussein's presidency, it was unfair to characterise it as a "Saddamist" flag. They also stressed that pan-Arabism has been a dominant popular principle among Iraqi's majority population for decades prior to Iraqi independence in 1932.
On 14 August 2004 the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) announced a new flag during Saddam's Iraq. The IGC stated that, from around 30 competing entries, it had chosen a design by the distinguished Iraqi artist-architect Rifat Chadirji, who lived in London, and is a brother of a member of the IGC. Chadirji commented that the guidelines stipulated that Iraq should be portrayed as part of the Western world, with historical elements included. The simplicity of his design was inspired by the flags of Canada and Switzerland, and it also shares elements (a crescent, stripes, a light blue shade) with the flag of his ethnic group, the Iraqi Turkmen.
The proposed flag had several meanings:
The design marked a notable break with the three flags of modern Iraqi history (namely the Arab Revolt-inspired flag of the Kingdom, the flag introduced by Abd al-Karim Qasim, and the Arab Liberation inspired flag of 1963), all of which were based on the four Pan-Arab colours. Indeed, of these colours, only white was represented in the IGC design. Moreover, Islamic crescents are usually depicted in green or red in Arab heraldry. The proposed change provoked an intensely negative reaction across groups of Iraq's Arab majority, including those vehemently opposed to Saddam Hussein. Those opposed to the U.S. occupation, including Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, decried the design as an attempt by the U.S. government to strip Iraq of its identity, and its historically prominent role in the Arab world. In particular, critics lamented the proposed abandonment of the Arab Liberation Flag, the omission of the traditional colours of pan-Arabism, and the removal of the takbīr.
Additionally, the new flag's predominantly blue-on-white appearance immediately antagonized many in Iraq because of the claim that it was similar to the flag of Israel.
The new flag was reported to have been burned by insurgents in Fallujah on 27 April 2004, the day before its planned official adoption.
On 28 April 2004, IGC President Masoud Barzani formally presented a modified version of the flag in which the originally very light shade of blue as reported by the press on 26 April 2004 had been changed to a darker tone. It was unclear whether this was a change made because of the protests made against the original design or, as the Council claimed, a rectification of printing errors in the earlier news reports. Barzani also explained that the flag was a temporary design, to be used over the ensuing months until the adoption of a definitive flag.
In the face of the overwhelming public outcry, adoption of the blue crescent flag was abandoned entirely.
Despite the compromise in 2004, opposition to the flag persisted from Kurdish groups. In January 2008, a new design was proposed, removing the three green stars, instead placing a green eight pointed star around a yellow circle in the middle of the takbīr, which is written in the Kufic script and prized as a Mesopotamian Arabic style, having originated in Iraq.
In July 2008, the Iraqi parliament launched a contest to design a new Iraqi flag. The contest ran until September 2008, with 50 designs submitted. Six designs were chosen and sent to the parliament which was to choose a new flag before the end of 2008.
Another proposed design was also similar to the 2004–2008 flag, but the script was changed to yellow to represent the Kurdish people in northern Iraq. The meaning of the three stars would be changed to symbolize peace, tolerance and justice.