The current Afghan flag is quite young at just over five years old. The country has changed it's flag over twenty times since the 18th century, so don't get too attached to this one.
The current incarnation is not nearly as whimsical as, say the all-black rectangle they used until 1901, but it does hold much more detail. Up until 1928, the powers that be in Kabul just could not let go of that black background, daring only to add white to it in several different designs. In 1928 they broke the colour barrier and switched to the same Black-Red-Green stripe scheme we see on today's flag, with a central design of the sun rising over snow-capped mountains wrapped in a wreath of wheat...so exactly what everyone thinks of when someone says "Afghanistan".
They weren't done tinkering there, though. The flag went under several overhauls before arriving at the design we know today. A personal favourite is the flag designed by the Taliban in 1996 - a plain white rectangle. Maybe it was an effort to undo the damage done by the unlucky pre-1901 all-black flag, because it sure wasn't an act of surrender.
Back to the current flag. The mosque and Arabic script in the centre inspire fear and foreboding because I've never been in a mosque and I can't read Arabic. The unfamiliar can be very frightening.
The leftmost vertical stripe is black, which I can only assume represents the war, death, and oppression that have afflicted the nation for the last half-century. The red vertical stripe in the middle represents the blood spilled to make Afghanistan the socioeconomic and geopolitical power we know today. The green vertical stripe on the right represents the fertile soil that gives rise to the lush vegetation that is a classic characteristic of modern Afghanistan.
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