The Struggle Between the Amazigh Flag and the Red Moroccan Flag

Flag symbolism and origin

The most comprehensive interpretation of the flag is to be found on bladi.net, 19 August 2006. The text seems to have been copied from another, uncredited source.
The flag is said to have been designed by the Berber Academy (Agraw Imazighen).
Blue (amidad) represents the Mediterranean Sea, whose shores have been inhabited by the Imazighen for millenaries.
Green (azegzaw) represents the green land, which has been cultivated by the Imazighen since the Prehistoric times.
Yellow (awragh) represents the Sahara, as the Tuaregs' domain, but also joy and gold.
Accordingly, the three colours represent North Africa, from its Mediterranean shore in the north to the Sahara desert in the south, and the attachement of the Imazighen to their land.
The Imazighen red emblem represents both the eternal life and the blood shed by the martyres. As the symbol of the free men defending their culture, it watches and enlightens Tamazgha, the Imazighens' country (the whole of North Africa and the Saharian immensity).
The flag represents the harmony of the human beings with their land.
The anthropomorphic emblem has been known since the Prehistoric times. Its modern meaning, as the symbol of the Imazighen people, is to be credited to Muhend Aarav Bessaoud, founder of the Berber Academy in 1966. The emblem can be worn on a medal, on a ring or on a bell clasp to express support to the Imazighen cause.

The Berber flag was the subject of a thread started on 9 May 2002 on kabyle.com, no longer online.
Here again, fhe flag is said to have been designed by the Berber Academy under the guidance of Muhend Aarav Bessaoud. The creation date is given as "early 1978". A contributor ot the thread says that Bessaoud has modernized the meaning of the colours, which were originally parts of the Kabyle jewelry, the three stripes as enamels and red as coral cabochons. The original meaning of the colours is said to be the following.
Blue represents water from the sky and yellow the sun heath; the combination of these two natural phenomena allows agricultural production.
Red represents the night star, that is the moon and, in the Berber symbolics, the woman. Indeed the woman is cooking (and cooking requires magic) on the family holy fire.
Another contributor claims that the flag has been used since millenaries and the times of the great Berber chiefs. He further adds that the flag was used during the negociations that led to the Évian agreement (18 March 1962) and the end of the independence war in Algeria. Krim Belkacem, responsible of the Kabylian zone during the war and leader of the FLN delegation at Évian, was welcomed with two flags, the French flag and the Berber flag. The contributor says he is 24 years old, therefore he could not have been an eyewitness at Évian. I have not found any other record of a Berber flag used at Évian.

According to an interview of Ould Slimane Salem, the Berber Academy was created in 1966 by young Berbers, most of them being Kabyles, to restore the use of the Tifinagh language and propose a standardized alphabet. Renamed Berber Assembly (Agraw Imazighen) in 1967, the movement was suppressed in 1978 by the French authorities upon pressure by President of Algeria Houari Boumediene. It seems thatBessaoud was involved in violent acts and, maybe, racket against supporters of the FLN in Paris, which was a convenient pretext to get rid of him and of the Berber Academy.
Muhend Aarav Bessaoud (1924-2002), appointed officer in Kabylia during the war of independence, struggled against the new rulers after the independence, from 1963 to 1965, and exiled to France in 1966, where he created the Berber Academy. After the suppression of the Academy, Bessaoud was expelled to England and was prevented to return to Kabylia until 1997. Bessaoud is considered as the spiritual father of Berberism.

Ivan Sache, 31 December 2008