Paraguay, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan

More than half of my visitors now come from outside Norway. 140 flags are now represented in my country file, and I welcome the last three.

The flag of Paraguay (Spanish: bandera de Paraguay) was adopted in 1842. Along with that of Saudi Arabia and Moldova, it is the only national flag with different emblems on its obverse and reverse sides.

Each side of the flag consists of three equal, horizontal bands: red, white, and blue, with an emblem centered in the white band. The emblem on the obverse side is the national coat of arms of Paraguay: a yellow five-pointed star surrounded by a green wreath capped by the words REPUBLICA DEL PARAGUAY ("Republic of Paraguay"), all within two concentric circles); the emblem on the reverse side is the seal of the treasury (a yellow lion below a red liberty cap and the words Paz y Justicia ("Peace and Justice") capped by REPUBLICA DEL PARAGUAY, again within two circles.
Its colors bear resemblance to the modern flag of the Netherlands.
The design of the flag was simplified in 1991.

Paraguay's history has been characterized by long periods of political instability and infighting, and devastating wars with its neighbors.
In recent years, Paraguay has made important progress toward greater fiscal transparency. The fairly comprehensive financial administration law (1999) has been complemented by recent legal reforms that eliminated most tax exemptions, revamped revenue administration procedures and introduced standardized transparency requirements for public procurement, all of which reduce the scope for corruption.

The Flag of Afghanistan (Pashto:د افغانستان بيرغ) was adopted by the transitional government of Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan in 2002–2004. This flag is similar to the one flown in Afghanistan during the monarchy between 1930 and 1973. The difference is the addition of the shahadah at the top of the coat-of-arms (seen in gold/yellow) in the center. The new flag was adopted January 4, 2004.

This flag consists of three stripes of the colors black, red, and green. This has been present on most flags of Afghanistan in the last twenty years. The center emblem is the classical emblem of Afghanistan with a mosque with its mihrab facing Mecca.

The pre-Taliban-era and Afghan Northern Alliance flag featured the same emblem, but with green, white and black horizontal stripes instead.
Afghanistan has had more changes of its national flag during the twentieth century than any other country in the world.

During the last 30 years Afghanistan has been at constant war with interference from international troops. Hopefully the people in the country within short can experience freedom and peace, prosperity and growth based upon their own desires.


The flag of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan bayrağı) is the national flag of Azerbaijan. It consists of three equal horizontal bands colored blue, red, and green, with a white crescent and an eight-pointed star (Rub El Hizb) are centered in the red band. The blue band refers to the Turkic heritage, the red is for progress and Europeanisation and the green refers to Islam.

The official colours and size were adopted on February 5, 1991, since then the flag is referred to in the Constitution and is mentioned two times in the national anthem. The flag is used on land, as the civil, state and war flag, at sea, as the civil, state and naval ensign and naval jack. The specific shades of the national flag were laid out in a 2004 law as the following: blue - PMS 313 C, red - PMS 185 C, green - PMS 3405 C

Thor Heyerdahl the Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer with a scientific background in zoology and geography, became notable for his Kon-Tiki expedition, in which he sailed 4,300 miles (8,000 km) by raft from South America to the Tuamotu Islands.
But Heyerdahl also made several visits to Azerbaijan between 1980 and 2000. He was long fascinated with the rock carvings at Gobustan (about 30 miles west of Baku), having become convinced that their artistic style closely resembles the carvings found in his native Norway. The ship designs, in particular, were regarded by Heyerdahl as similar and drawn with a simple sickle - shaped line, representing the base of the boat, with vertical lines on deck, illustrating crew or, perhaps, raised oars.

Based on this and other published documentation, Heyerdahl proposes that Azerbaijan was the site of an ancient advanced civilization. He believed natives migrated north through waterways to present-day Scandinavia using ingeniously constructed vessels made of skins that could be folded like cloth. When voyagers traveled upstream, they conveniently folded their skin boats and transported them via pack animals. Herodotus also describes such boats from this region in his works of the 5th century BCE.

On this visit to Baku, Heyerdahl lectured at the Academy of Sciences about the history of ancient Nordic Kings. He spoke of a notation made by Snorri, a 13th-century historian, which reads: "Odin (a Scandinavian god who was one of the kings) came to the North with his people from a country called Aser." Heyerdahl claimed that the geographic location of Aser matches the region of contemporary Azerbaijan-"east of the Caucasus mountains and the Black Sea".