United Arab Emirates

Egypt and Syria formed in 1958 the United Arab Republic. The new republic adopted a flag made of three horizontal red-white-black stripes, with two green stars placed on the white stripe. The two stars represented the two states which constituted the republic. In 1961, Syria left the UAR but Egypt kept using the name of UAR and the flag until 1 January 1972. In 1963, Egypt, Syria and Iraq tried to constitute a new union, to no avail. The proposed flag for the union should have been the same as the UAR flag, but with three stars symbolizing the three states constituting the union. The union never existed but Iraq retained the proposed flag as its national flag. The official explanation of the three stars was they should remind Iraqis of attempts to unify the Arab countries.