A New Iraqi Flag Approved Today
Iraq nowdays January 23rd, 2008Earlier today, the Iraqi parliament approved a new flag for Iraq. The one shown below:
164 Parliament members attended the session of which 50% voted for this flag out of four options that were given in this session. Mahmoud Al-Mashhadani, the head of the parliament, said that "this is a temporary flag until a flag is chosen by the Iraqi people". It seems like the parliament does not represent the Iraqi people anyway.
Way to go Kurds. You've made it through an f*cked up the flag. Its the flag that the evil army of Saddam killed the Kurds under. The army that Maoud Al-Barazani asked for Saddam's help against Jalal Al-Talibani under. o you cannot tolerate its existence anymore.
This brings me to an interesting reading I came across today. Masoud Barzani is trying to press charges against Michael Rubin how said that the Kurds are assisting Iranian to come into Iraq in a deal that involves money and guarantees that no terrorism act will take place on the lands of Kurdistan.
"During the first week in July 2003, an American military unit patrolling the mountains of northeastern Iraq approximately thirty miles from the Iranian border came across an unauthorized KDP checkpoint from which they confiscated a cache of Iranian passports and money. KDP officials had used the checkpoint to facilitate Iranian infiltration–allowing Iranian operatives to swap Iranian passports for local Kurdish identity papers–in exchange for cash. Kurdish officials privately acknowledge that this case was not unique. At the beginning of the Iraqi insurgency in April 2004, Iraqi Kurdistan became a transit point for Ansar al-Sunna: its members entered Iraqi Kurdistan from Iran and received safe passage to Mosul in exchange for an agreement not to conduct operations in the three northern governorates–and perhaps payment as well."
Everyone in Kurdistan knows what happened after Saddam lost control over Kurdistan in 1991. Talbani and Barzani disassembled and sold all the facilities in Kurdistan and sold it through smugglers to Iran and Turkey. This includes water and electricity facilities and even school seats. Afterwards, Talbani and Barzani started to ask for money to help and support the poor kurdish people. And they took the shares of Food-for-Oil program into their on pockets through fake companies and contracts.
People who do such things, are very likely to smuggle terrorism into Iraq for money. And also, having the whole country f*cked up would lead more investments into Kurdistan. An apartment in Sulaymaniya and and even Arbil now cost more than an apartment in Paris. The rents are very high and the living costs are going though the roof. And by the end of the day, a piece of everything goes into the pockets of the good old Talbani and Barzani.
If the kurdish people are willing to hold the silence for a long time, maybe it better for Iraq to let Kurdistan be an independent country of its own.
January 23rd, 2008 at 12:42 am
Do you actually believe all that? I find that very disturbing. If you hate the Kurds that much, maybe you’re right - they should just secede.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:24 am
Craig,
I do not hate the Kurds. The kurdish people are very kind. And I should have made that clear in the post. All the talk is about the two kurdish leaders and their militias. And the Kurdish people are now suffering from the same tyranny all Iraq suffered from during Saddam’s time. Believe me neither Talbani nor Barzani is less a criminal than Saddam.
You may notice that Europe is still having the huge number of Kurdish refugees and no noticeable number of them returned to Kurdistan. And if you read the statistics of the Kurdish refugees in Europe, you will find out that the biggest number of refugees left Kurdistan after 1991, i.e., after Saddam lost control over it.
And yes I do believe most of what Michael Rubin said because I know, as all Iraqis do, the history of these two Kurdish leaders.
January 23rd, 2008 at 8:29 am
BlogIraqi, are you sure the writing is in yellow? I’ve only seen pics and text descriptions where it stays in green, like here, for example.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
BlogIraqi, thanks for the reply. I guess I was a little offhand in my comment.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq203/crossroads03.html
Saddam didn’t “lose control” in 1991. He slaughtered the Kurds in 1991. He didn’t “lose control” until the no-fly zones were set up in 1992. Those Kurdish refugees left in 1991 because of Saddam. I *remember* watching the video on the news of hundreds of thousands of Kurds huddled in blankets and sleeping in the mud, and the massive food drops that were undertaken to keep them alive. I’ll never forget it.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:17 am
By the way, refugees almost never return to their country of origin. I’m not sure why that is. I’ve never been a refugee, so I don’t know how it feels, but it doesn’t seem to matter what part of the world they are originally from. People who leave their country as refugees, don’t go back. People who leave as “exiles” sometimes do.
January 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Well Rhus,
This is what I saw on Al-Iraqiya TV when they were broadcasting the parliament session yesterday afternoon. Maybe I did not get that right. I’ll look into it and fix it if I am wrong. Maybe I got confused because two of the four suggestions had “Allah Akbar” in yellow.
January 23rd, 2008 at 11:01 am
Craig,
According to the UNHCR statistical year book of Iraq in 2005, an average of 120,000 Iraqi refugees per year fled the country from 1995 to 2002. You can find that report here.
These people were mostly Kurds. Saddam definitely cause huge damage to Kurds no one can debate that. But they Kurdish leaders have caused parallel damage, and mostly, they leaders provoked Saddam by supporting the Iranians during the Iraqi-Iranian war.
I just hope the Kurdish people relaize that those leaders are not working for the best of the Kurdish people interest and try to make a difference.
January 23rd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
Rhus you were right. I corrected the image. I probably got confused with all these flags flying around.
January 26th, 2008 at 12:06 am
The problem is this ugly flag is also going to be changed AGAIN!
MAN! This country is really screwed up under the rule of these awful politicians.
January 26th, 2008 at 4:26 am
Wouldn’t it be great to let the children of Iraq have a contest to design next years flag? After all, they are the ones who will have to honor and live with it the longest. Only 2 rules:
1. Must be designed by a child under a certain age–maybe 15?
2. Entries to be judged by teachers-NOT POLITICIANS!
January 26th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
BT,
I think it was a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle bit not the right time with all the people getting killed everywhere in Iraq. But the Kurdish politicians kept pushing for the change and now they are not satisfied as they say in their newspapers. They say that “Allah Akbar” should be removed because it represents an Islamic system, and it should not be used for Iraq.
Joe,
Nice suggestion. And to be honest, I think a bunch of under-15 children will not have the inner-fights that the current Iraqi government has. So, maybe we can expand your suggestion and hand them over the government an maybe the beloved Iraqi politicians can learn something from them.
I don’t really think that the Iraqi children can be as innocent and childish as the children in the rest of the world after going through what happened in the last few years. They will probably come up with a flag containing Humvees and electric generators.
January 26th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Reuters:”And while parliament on Tuesday said the new flag should be flown immediately on all state buildings, the old one still hung from a pole near the entrance to the legislature on Saturday.”
They seem very enthusiastic about the new flag.
January 29th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Habibi, the Kurds will not be satisfied until they divide the country and get their independece. Keep the flag, change the flag is just a way to pass some time. However, they know that if they divide Iraq Turkey, Syria and Iran will f**k them up.
Joe, I love your suggestion. Very well said.
February 13th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Asalamu alaikum,
I would like to talk to you about the condition and future of your country.
As a British born Muslim Convert to the religion and learning from its classical sources, the quran and Sunnah of the prophet and the prophets before him,
Jesus, Moses may peace be upon them all, I believe that I have a Solution, that we all hold a solution to the subjugation of your country and many others in your region.
A bit about me… I was Christian, but never believed that Jesus was a God or that I needed to contact priests or worship idols to worship. So the jump to the proofs of Islam was a very easy one for me. Most of all because I also knew that Secularism was a false way of life, so the option that was being given to me by my government was extremely barbaric, and based on lying to me about what its real intentions were. If you ever came to Britain you would know that the anti Islamic propaganda and foreign policy combined makes to dehumanise Muslims and paint Islam as a backward set of rules, and that secularism is way more “civilised”
This roused my suspicions, and I started to dig for the truth that these people were obviously trying to hide and destroy.
When I looked into the Shariah Law that the prophet Muhammad left behind, I saw that it was beautiful in its simplicity and left a full ideology which had no real contradictions, and was based on truth alone.
Iraqis need to understand the length that will be gone to by the Western powers to keep control. Propaganda has reached a very sophisticated level over here. They work on perceptions of the masses years before carrying anything out. Iraq was a typical example. The news was awash about the “threat” that turned out to be a lie, but literally 1 year before 9/11 this was going on. I don’t need to go into 9/11, I would hope that you would have the understanding I am talking about when I say that they will go to any length to secure their position – the US that is.
The point is, we are missing the point if we just concentrate on the effects of what this tyranny is doing, whilst they smile for the cameras. We have to cut it off at the root. The root is the thoughts of the people. We need to make people understand that only 200 years ago, while the thinking was declining in the Islamic state which covered all of the middle east, you still had so much more security than you have post 1924, when the khilafah was dismantled, and the West divided your lands and installed its satellite rulers. Now you are just toys in the hands of spiteful children that want all that you have and would destroy you all if they could get away with it.
Do my words affect you? It is because they are manifest truth.
Under the caliphate anyone, Muslim, Jew, Christian, or otherwise, could travel through every land of the Middle East in safety. This is hard to understand now, but it was this way for a thousand years, the only time it changed was when an outside force tried to wage war for example the Mongols. But the strength of the system and the belief of the people kept trials on this earth short and sharp. Living in the present it is hard to except that we can be a catalyst for change… back to when Africa was the main exporter of food in the world.
There is a hadith of the prophet Muhammad may peace be upon him and all of the prophets. He said to his companions:
“The time is not far when the nations will gather around you from every side, just as diners gather around a dish.” We said, “O Messenger of Allah! Will it be due to smallness of our numbers at that time?” He said, “You will be many on that day, but you will be rubbish (or foam) like the rubbish (or foam) of flood water. Respect will be dislodged from the hearts of your enemies, and flimsiness will be placed in your hearts.” They asked, “What is flimsiness?” He said, “Love of this world and hate for death.” [Ahmad via Thawban]
Even if you are an Iraqi Christian, as a Muslim it doesn’t matter to me, with the utmost respect in the world I am with you and all of the people of Iraq, and there are many all over the world who are trying to affect the status of the people of your oppressed lands. Make no mistake; the bombs that go off in markets and mosques are planted by the SAS of the UK and the hired mercenaries of the US, just as the Taliban were trained in South Wales in Britain by the same SAS in terrorist techniques.
There are obviously people trying to fight the occupying forces on the ground and with some success, but We need to change the thoughts and ideas of the people. The idea of democracy is just a clever tactic to bring people to the secular values of the West. Trust me; we are not as civilised as you might think at first glance. The televised “shock and awe campaign” which aired around the world by the West as 20,000 people died in 2 weeks is just a snippet of the full testimony to that. The UN reckons 7 million have died in the last 15 yearsjust in your region through interference.
BAthism has been tried, Saddam was just a tool, and when he was done with they killed him. Communism, Secularism, none of it will work. Only when we come back to the ideology of Islam will we be given the rights that the West so vigorously tells us it stands for.
I would appreciate your thoughts, If any of this offends please feel free to state your views; I wish to dialogue with you and come to understand your views.
Yusuf
ps. I am sending this email to many people i find, i am looking to revive the Ummah of Muhammad one person at a time, like he did to establish the Islamic state peacefully.
February 14th, 2008 at 8:51 am
Yusuf,
First, I would like to welcome you and admire the belief and devotion to your case.
Second, I would like to admire the first part you wrote about Islam.
Third, I would like to tell you that I am not such a big fan of the conspiracy theory. And regarding 9/11, if Bin-Laden did it or not, this most single action that distorted Islam’s image in the whole world.
I don’t think an islamic state in the barbaric form that is being pursued is not the right solution. The beliefs and regulations of religion must start from the people themselves. When people start to apply the real essence of religion on themselves, gradually, life for everyone will get better.
I am sure that you know that islam is not about violence and imposing your beliefs and opinions on other people. Islam is about believing in God, prophet Mohammed and all the prophets before him, and the divine books they brought. This is the best example of tolerance that must be practiced by muslims as well as everyone in the world.
I know that life for muslims in almost all the non-muslim countries has been hard for a long time. And it became even harder since 9/11. But this will never justify killing people in the name of Islam.
And the occupation of Iraq is a very complicated situation. No occupiers are welcomed everywhere in the world. And given the current situation, a sudden withdrawal of the occupiers will not make things better. This is because the wrong people have taken power and guns. People who take disguise in sects and use religion as a claimed motive and others who use ethnicity instead of sect. This goes on all the political people who are seeking personal benefit in the name of the sect of the ethnic group. And now after about five years of occupation, the occupiers managed to hand-over guns to every possible side in a civil war.
A lot of education and public-awareness need to be practiced such that people would understand the true essence of religion and let go the sectarian and ethnic differences. Its a long way, and I see the clock ticking in a down-count to a disaster. I hope that I am wrong.
February 15th, 2008 at 6:07 am
I have been touched by your postings. I wish someday you will be able to return to your beloved country.
January 18th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
reply to “Treasure of Baghdad”
dear Treasure of Baghdad, your sound seems to be a raciest and nationalist individual. Kurdish people like others such as Arab people, have their own interests and rights. therefore, an independent Kurdistan is not an offense. how you see the solution for independent Palestine and should also seeks for Kurdistan too, because they are in the same boat. if you see the situation in human beings prospective. good luck
January 18th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
reply to Joe
dear Joe, it is not right to follow up something which you don’t understand. saying yes to “Treasure of Baghdad” is not appropriate answer for you without adding up anything to explain. try to be optimistic with your writing.