One Utah

Does anyone remember the heady days of Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority? The conquerors of Baghdad and the exiled politicians they brought with them were full of enthusiasm to remake the New Iraq, whether anyone else liked it or not. One of their genius ideas, unveiled in April 2004, was a new flag in the colors of Israel and Kurdistan. The Onion didn’t have to make this up, it was self-satirizing.

The Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), working for Bremer, sprang this on everyone without much advance notice. The new flag was the work of an Iraqi artist resident in London called Rifat Chadirji, also the brother of Nassir al-Chaderchi, the chairman of the IGC committee charged with choosing a new flag for Iraq. Typical reaction:

What gives these people the right to throw away our flag, to change the symbol of Iraq? asked Salah, a building contractor of normally moderate political opinions. It makes me very angry because these people were appointed by the Americans. I will not regard the new flag as representing me but only traitors and collaborators.

As far as I can tell, the unwanted flag only flew over the Green Zone. It was burned in Fallujah. Six months later, it was pretty much a dead issue.

In Kurdistan, aka northern Iraq, they passed a law against flying the old Iraqi flag. To Kurds, the three stars symbolizing the Baath Party and the words “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) added in Saddam’s own handwriting in 1991 were nothing but a symbol of oppression. Kurdistan has its own flag, featuring a yellow sunburst.

Today Iraq’s parliament approved a changed flag design, removing the stars and putting “Allahu Akbar” in a standardized type face. Nothing yellow for the Kurds.

Wikipedia has an interesting summary of the flag flap.

This entry was posted Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Democracy, Disaster, Iraq, This Blog, War. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.