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Trucial States Council until 1971 (United Arab Emirates)

2:3 | stripes 1+2+1
image by Yosef Obskura

Description
Subnational Flags (Constituent Emirates' Flags)

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Description

Before the United Arab Emirates, there was an attempt to form a Federation of Arab Emirates which would have included Bahrain and Kuwait in with the so-called Trucial States. I believe its flag was proposed as horizontally red-white-red (proportions something like 1:2:1) with a green nine-pointed (seven-pointed, according to James Dignan, as Bahrain and Kuwait did not join) star in the centre.
Roy Stilling, 20 November 1995

This was the official flag of the Trucial States Council, and not a proposal. The stripes were in fact 1:2:1. The flag in FOTW is now correct, except that the star's points were slightly shorter, but that was never fixed, as far as I know. I do not know the correct proportions, but I think they were 2:3, as the picture we have [at the Archiv für Flaggenkunde] is in those proportions, and the photocopy of the photograph of the Trucial States Levy's flag we have shows the flag also being 2:3. There also was a naval flag and a war flag for the Council, but I have to look up in our files.
Ralf Stelter, 19 April 1999

According to Pedersen 1971, page 63, the seven Sheiks of the Trucial States formed a Council and this was the unofficial flag of that Council. That is the reason for the seven point star.
Yosef Obskura quoted by Željko Heimer, 26 April 1999

Wikipedia shows this flag at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_Trucial_States.svg#filelinks
Size of white (center) stripe appears about twice as high as that of the red (top or bottom) stripe 1:2:1
The star (centered) --less modern - one might say 'fatter'-- approaches a more golden color.
John Horvath Jr., 24 December 2009

I have " The International Flag Book in colour" by Christian Fogd Pedersen published in 1971 in Denmark which shows the exactly same image presented here.
The flag proportion : 2 : 3, The horizontal stripe proportion : 1 : 2: 1. The number of star points: seven in green
Nozomi Kariyasu, 24 December 2009

The world affairs blog "Coming Anarchy" has begun a series on the flags of Arabia, with the first article covering "The Trucial States of the Persian Gulf" (the modern day UAE). It explains that the white in the various states' flags was imposed by the British to indicate the states' peaceful relations to patrolling naval vessels.
Source: http://cominganarchy.com/2010/03/29/flags-of-arabia-part-1-the-trucial-states-of-the-persian-gulf/
So nothing particularly new so far, but it'll be interesting to see what else they come up with in this series.
Roy, 29 March 2010