The World's Only All-Green Flag

When Libya gained full independence on 24 December 1951 — the first African country to gain independence through the United Nations — the new Kingdom of Libya adopted a tricolour of red, black and green with a white crescent and star. The design was by Omar Faiek Shennib, approved by King Idris Al Senussi. The three colours represented Libya's three historic regions: Cyrenaica (black), Fezzan (red), and Tripolitania (green). This flag would be banned for 42 years but never forgotten.

On 7 September 1969, 27-year-old army colonel Muammar Gaddafi led a bloodless coup, deposing King Idris while he was abroad for medical treatment. The Kingdom's flag was immediately replaced with the Pan-Arab tricolour of red, white and black — the same colours as Egypt, where Gaddafi's hero Gamal Abdel Nasser had used them as a symbol of Arab nationalism. Libya was now the Libyan Arab Republic.

On 1 January 1972, Libya joined Egypt and Syria in the short-lived Federation of Arab Republics, an attempt to create a unified Arab state. The common federation flag was adopted — the same red, white and black tricolour but with a golden Hawk of Quraish (the emblem linking the three nations to the Prophet Mohammed's tribe) in the centre. The federation collapsed when Egypt's President Sadat made peace with Israel, which Gaddafi regarded as a betrayal of Arab unity.

In November 1977, furious at Sadat's visit to Jerusalem to meet Israeli Prime Minister Begin, Gaddafi broke from Egypt entirely and adopted a completely plain, all-green flag to represent his political philosophy, outlined in his "Green Book." Green symbolised Islam, the revolution and the natural world. The flag had no design, no symbols, no crescent — nothing. It was the only national flag in history with just one colour and no design at all (briefly matched only by Afghanistan's all-white Taliban flag in 1996–1997). For 34 years, this plain green flag flew over Libya.

When the Arab Spring reached Libya in February 2011 and rebels rose against Gaddafi, one of their first acts was to raise the Kingdom's 1951 flag — banned since 1969 — as the symbol of their movement. As the National Transitional Council took control of Tripoli in August 2011, the original flag was formally restored. On 3 August 2011, the NTC's Constitutional Declaration named the 1951 flag as Libya's national flag. France was the first country to recognise the new government, and the first to allow the restored flag to be raised over the Libyan embassy in Paris.