Flag of Iraq

What the flag of Iraq looks like

The flag of Iraq is a horizontal tricolor of red at the top, white in the middle and black at the bottom. The proportions are 2:3. In the center of the white band, written in green, is the phrase Allahu Akbar (Allāhu akbar, "God is the greatest"), also called the takbir.

The words are in Kufic script, a simple, angular style of Arabic calligraphy that is one of the oldest forms. The takbir was added to the flag in January 1991 in a form said to be Saddam Hussein's own handwriting. A stylized Kufic script replaced it in 2004, and the 2008 version brought the two words closer together in bold and corrected the spelling of Allah. The green words are the only touch of color in the white band.

The flag is seen as a small icon on the Iraq flag emoji page, and you can download images from our download page.

Iraq flag meaning and symbolism

The red, white and black are the Pan-Arab colors, which come from the flags of the Arab Revolt of 1916 and appear on many Arab national flags. The colors are also linked to a verse by the poet 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 law itself only describes the flag.

The words Allahu Akbar are an Islamic phrase used in prayer and as a declaration of faith. They first appeared on the flag in January 1991, during the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein added them to stress Iraq's Islamic identity, and they were kept in 2008 in a new style.

Earlier versions of the flag, from 1963, had three green stars in the white band. A 1986 law reinterpreted them as the Ba'ath Party motto: unity, freedom and socialism. The stars were removed in 2008, a change demanded by Iraq's Kurdish population, who associated them with the Al-Anfal genocide.

History of the Iraqi flag

The first flags of the modern state were used by the Kingdom of Iraq in the 1920s. It was black, white and green horizontal stripes with a red trapezoid at the hoist containing two white stars, based on the flag of the Arab Revolt. After the revolution of 14 July 1958 that overthrew the monarchy, the republic adopted a new flag in 1959: a black, white and green vertical tricolor with a red eight-pointed star and a yellow circle in the center, the yellow Kurdish sun inside the star of Ishtar.

On 31 July 1963, after the overthrow of Qasim, Iraq adopted the red, white and black Arab Liberation Flag pattern with three green stars, in line with the Nasserist ideology of President Abdul Salam Arif. The basic tricolor has been in use ever since. In January 1991, in the buildup to the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein added the words Allahu Akbar between the stars in his own handwriting.

After the 2003 invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council proposed a new flag in 2004, designed by Rifat Chadirji, with a blue crescent on a white field. It was widely criticized in Iraq, including for a claimed similarity to the flag of Israel, and was dropped. A compromise followed in 2004 that kept the old flag with the takbir in Kufic script. On 22 January 2008 the Council of Representatives approved the current design (Law 9 of 2008): it kept the red, white and black stripes and the green takbir but removed the three stars. It was meant to be temporary, with a final decision on the flag to come later, and it has stayed in use.

Kurdistan and other flags in Iraq

The Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq has its own flag, which flies next to the Iraqi flag in the region. It has red, white and green horizontal stripes with a golden sun with 21 rays in the center. Many Kurds objected to the older Iraqi flags because of their link to the Ba'ath regime, which carried out campaigns against the Kurdish population.

Iraq's flag is similar to those of Egypt and Yemen, and to Syria's former flag, which also used the Pan-Arab red, white and black. The Iraqi flag can be identified by its green script in the white band.