Flag of Afghanistan

How to read it

The Taliban first adopted the white flag with the shahada in 1997 and used it until 2001, Store norske leksikon records, and brought it back when they took power on 15 August 2021. On 11 September 2021 the interim prime minister, Mohammad Hassan Akhund, raised it over the presidential palace in Kabul; a spokesman said the flag-raising marked the official start of the new government’s work, the Associated Press reported. A decree of 20 March 2022, reported by the news agency ANI, ordered all government agencies in the country and abroad to use the white flag and barred officials from appearing in public with the tricolour.

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The tricolour of the Islamic Republic

Article 19 of the Islamic Republic’s constitution of 2004 describes a flag of three equal vertical bands, black, red and green from the pole, with the national emblem in the centre: a mosque with its prayer niche and pulpit, in white, with a flag at each side, the shahada and “God is great” at the top over the rays of a rising sun, and below, the year 1919 and the name “Afghanistan”, framed by sheaves of wheat. The flag of 2002 was 1:2, Store norske leksikon notes, with the emblem in the red band only, and in 2004 it became 2:3 and the emblem spread onto the black and green. Amu TV traces the black, red and green to King Amanullah Khan, whose flag of 1928 first used the three colours.

Where the tricolour still flies

Amu TV wrote in July 2024 that the United Nations still recognises the tricolour, and that it is flown at international events such as the Olympics. In June 2025 the Afghan embassy in The Hague said the black, red and green flag still flew on its building. In Moscow the white flag replaced the tricolour on the embassy on 4 July 2025, after Russia recognised the Taliban government, CBS News reported.

Telling it from Saudi Arabia’s flag

Saudi Arabia’s flag carries the same declaration of faith, in white on a green field, with a drawn sword beneath it, as its Basic Law of Governance describes it. Afghanistan’s white flag has the words in black and no sword.