| Saddam-Era
Flag Remains Iraq's Symbol
By FISNIK ABRASHI
©
The Associated Press
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Saddam Hussein
is gone - but his flag flies on.
The green, red, white and black banner - with the words ``God
is great,'' added by Saddam in the 1990s - fluttered Monday over
government buildings.
The proposed new flag, approved by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council, sank in public esteem faster than a stone in the Tigris
river after a firestorm of criticism that the new banner ignored
the country's Islamic and Arab character - and looked too much
like the Israeli flag.
Although the new flag was never formally withdrawn, even most
Governing Council members disavowed it. A bank of the Saddam-era
flags, one for each of Iraq's 18 provinces, served as the backdrop
in a conference room where ministers of the new government took
the oath of office Monday.
The proposed new national banner had two parallel blue stripes
along the bottom with a yellow stripe in the middle. The blue
stripes represented the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The yellow
stripe symbolized Iraq's ethnic Kurdish minority, taking its color
from the yellow star on the flag of Kurdistan.
Above the stripes, in a white field, was a blue crescent of Islam.
Trouble is, Israel has the only national flag in the Middle East
with the color blue.
Some critics thought that abandoning the old color scheme represented
a rejection of Iraq's Arab identity.
The current Iraqi flag is essentially the same as one adopted
in 1921 after the establishment of the modern Iraqi state. It
used the colors red, green, black and white which were symbols
of the pan-Arab movement which blossomed after the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
Just before the U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait
in 1991, Saddam added the words ``Allahu akbar'' or ``God is great''
in hopes of boosting the religious credentials of his otherwise
secular regime.
The green, white and black stripes denote Islam - recalling the
battle banners of the medieval Islamic dynasties of the Fatimids,
Ummayads and Abbasids. Green is said to have been the prophet
Muhammad's favorite color.
Islamic crescents in Arab heraldry are usually green or red.
Red is the color of Arab nationalism, the favored shade of Sharif
Hussein, who led the Arab revolt against Ottoman Turkish rule
in the early 1900s. He added green, white and black stripes to
create a symbol of pan-Arabism.
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