2479. 🇰🇼 Kuwait Issues 100 Stamps To Commemorate 33rd Anniversary Of Liberation.

New issues.

🇰🇼 Kuwait Post -

24 February 2024 - 33rd anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation by Coalition forces; Kuwaiti martyrs in the struggle against the Iraqi occupiers - 100 stamps issued in 5 sheets each of 20 different stamps depicting victims of the Iraqis. Lithographed. Rating:- ****. The Iraqis killed about 1000 Kuwaitis during their occupation of the country. Some of the victims have been featured in previous issues marking the anniversary.

🇲🇺 Mauritius Post -

8 April 2024 - 75th anniversary of the World Health Organisation - 1 stamp. Lithographed. Rating:- ***.

News of Commonwealth Post Offices -

From Businesstech - 

What future, South African postage stamps?

2417. 🇲🇾 Gaza Conflict Spills Over Into Philately In Malaysian New Issue.

 

🇲🇾 Pos Malaysia -

18 January 2024 - “Free Palestine” - 1 stamp. This presumably is a response to the Israeli armed response to the 7 October 2023 crimes of the Hamas terrorists which have ruled Gaza for a number of years. One expects that other Islamic territories will be releasing similar issues in the coming weeks. The postal administrations of two countries which were once British Mandated territories have already issued stamps related to the conflict :- 

🇮🇶 Postal service of Iraq 

6 December 2023 - 1 stamp and 1 miniature sheet. A shocking issue apparently praising the Hamas murder and kidnapping of Israeli citizens on 7 October 2023. The miniature sheet shows paratroopers dropping from the skies over the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and a scavenging bird assaulting the flag of Israel.The item bears the inscription “Tawafan Al-Aqsa” (“Al Aqsa Flood”) which apparently was the code name given for the terrible Hamas assault on Israeli civilians.

🇯🇴 Postal service of Jordan -

27 October 2023 - 2 stamps, both overprints and surcharges on previously issued stamps, the first being a stamp of 1991 which Jordan issued to note a Palestinian uprising and the second a stamp originally issued in 2003.

  The postal administrations of neither Malaysia, Iraq nor Jordan, have issued any item to note the terrible assault on Israeli civilians which lit the fuse to this current conflict.

2000. Commonwealth Stamps Review Of 2021.

 

Here is a review of the Commonwealth events and anniversaries in 2021 which usually had philatelic consequences and which are worth noting as the world continued to try to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic -  

2 February 🇬🇧 Death of centenarian charity fund raiser, Major Sir Tom Moore, who became a British icon during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Royal Mail refused to issue a stamp to commemorate this British hero but later in the year announced that a design competition for schoolchildren was to be held on the subject of Heroes of the Pandemic. It is possible that one of the designs will feature ‘Captain Tom’. The set will be released on 23 March 2022.

17 March 🇧🇩 Birth Centenary of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Father figure of Bangladesh. Throughout the year numerous commemoratives were released to commemorate this important anniversary.

9 April 🇬🇧 Death of The Duke Of Edinburgh (consort of Queen Elizabeth II) at the age of 99, a couple of months before his 100th birthday. Stamps from various Commonwealth philatelic entities planned to commemorate his birthday were substituted by more sombre stamps which looked back on his life.

21 April 🇬🇧 95th Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. Many stamp issues from around The Commonwealth were released.

27 April 🇸🇱 60th anniversary of Sierra Leone’s independence. So far no related commemoratives are known to have been issued by its postal service. There was good news in that the vast number of products produced in the country’s name by the notorious agency Stamperija appeared to have ceased.

17 May 🇬🇮 Royal Gibraltar Post Office felt it necessary to issue a Cryptocurrency stamp in a limited edition miniature sheet linked to a “block chain-based digital collectable” or “non-fungible token” counterpart (please don’t ask me to explain).

26 May 🇲🇿 The government of Mozambique abolished the national postal service, Correios de Moçambique, on the grounds that it was uneconomic to run. The day before the announcement,  Stamperija sneaked out a lot of expensive stamp issues including a number dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

23 June 🇰🇼 The 60th anniversary of the independence of Kuwait after Great Britain gave up its protectorate over the country. The country’s Post Office issued 2 stamps to commemorate the anniversary.

26 - 27 June - 🇷🇼 The meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) due to take place on these dates  in Kigali in Rwanda was postponed for a second time because of the ongoing pandemic.

24 July - 19 August. 🇦🇺🇧🇲 Delayed 2020 Olympic Games held in Tokyo.Australia Post, as usual, issued stamps to commemorate all of its gold medal winners while a Bermuda triathlete, Flora Duffy, won the territory’s first ever gold medal and was subsequently commemorated by a stamp issue.

15 August - 🇧🇭 50th anniversary of the Independence of Bahrain after Great Britain gave up its protectorate over the country. There is no news of any stamp issue having been released by the country’s postal service to commemorate the event.

21 August, 🇦🇫 Probably the most important event of the year, the fall of Kabul as Taliban forces invaded the city following the sudden abandonment of Afghanistan by US forces under orders from the disastrous US President Biden. The Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was forced to flee the country as Taliban forces closed in on the presidential palace precipitating widespread panic among the people with many wishing to follow Ghani’s example and escape from the country and the threat of rule by terrorists. British troops assisted in the mass evacuation of the terrified inhabitants from Kabul airport. Afghan Post’s final stamp of the Islamic Republic period had been issued earlier in the year to commemorate Tetsu Nakamura’s humanitarian work in the country.

22 August 🇮🇶 Centenary of the Accession of King Faisal I to the throne of Iraq by which the country became a Kingdom under a League of Nations Mandate belonging to Great Britain. The postal service of Iraq issued a stamp and a miniature sheet to commemorate the centenary.

27 August  🇮🇴 The Congress of the Universal Postal Union held in Abidjan in Côte D’Ivoire decided that the stamps of the British Indian Ocean Territory should no longer be registered, distributed and transmitted by the UPU and that only the stamps of the Republic of Mauritius should be used on mail from Diego Garcia and The Chagos Islands though that pronouncement failed to recognise that there was no functioning Mauritian post office in the islands.

3 September - 🇶🇦 Fiftieth anniversary of the achievement of Independence of Qatar after Great Britain gave up its protectorate over the country. The country’s postal service has so far not issued any stamps to commemorate the anniversary.

9 November 🇸🇭🇬🇧🇬🇸🇸🇭 The postal services of four UK Overseas territories, Ascension Island, British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia And The South Sandwich Islands and Tristan Da Cunha, participated in an omnibus issue commemorating the Blue Belt Programme whereby the British government helps the territories to develop programmes to protect their territorial waters. Each territory issued 4 stamps and 1 miniature sheet.

11 November - 🇿🇦 Death of former President of South Africa, FW De Klerk, last Head of State of South Africa who was a leader of the apartheid regime but who played an important role in negotiating with Nelson Mandela the end of white rule in the country and the establishment of democracy there.

20 November - 🇵🇳 After a long break, the first stamps to be issued by the postal service of Pitcairn Islands under the direction of its new philatelic agents, Tower Mint, were released commemorating the 95th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II.

30 November - 🇧🇧 Barbados became a Republic within The Commonwealth on the 45th anniversary of its independence from The United Kingdom. Dame Sandra Mason, the former Governor General, became the first President of the Republic. The Ceremony marking the enD of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II in Barbados was attended by The Prince Of Wales. Surprisingly no commemorative stamps were issued by the Barbados postal service to celebrate this landmark event in the nation’s history.

2 December - 🇦🇪 50th anniversary of the achievement of Independence of The Trucial States after Great Britain gave up its protectorate over them. Six of the seven territories united to form The United Arab Emirates and the country’s postal service issued 1 stamp and 8 miniature sheets to commemorate the anniversary.

9 December - 🇹🇿 60th anniversary of the Independence of Tanganyika. No news yet of any stamps having been released to commemorate the anniversary but it is possible than such an issue has been released by the postal service of Tanzania. 

26 December - 🇿🇦 The death was announced of the former Archbishop of Cape Town, Desmond Tutu, who was an important campaigner against apartheid in South Africa and who headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after the introduction of majority rule in the country which helped to ensure a peaceful transition period in South Africa. After conflict in the Solomon Islands he was called upon to carry on a similar role in that small Pacific nation. Expect to see many stamps in his honour during 2022.

Happy new year!

1999. 🇮🇶 Iraq Commemorates Its Centenary.

 

🇮🇶 Given the events of the first 20 years of this 21st century, the British involvement in the Middle East in the first part of the 20th Century has to be recognised as laying a road which lead directly to those events - wars and terrorist outrages - which haunted us most of all in the modern world before the COVID-19 pandemic took over as the present subject of our greatest concern. This involvement included setting up the State of Iraq, previously Mesopotamia, which this year commemorates its Centenary and the postal service of which has just released a stamp issue to celebrate this notable anniversary even though its hundred years of life have been frequently very troubled.

  The early history of Iraq and the British involvement with it and the stamps associated with the period of British rule are covered in Blog 424 (16 June 2014) and I will not therefore cover old ground again here but the new stamps (1 stamp from a sheetlet of 16 and 1 miniature sheet), issued by the Iraq postal service on 20 December 2021, are indeed very colourful and attractive and make an interesting footnote to a collection of stamps covering the British imperial period which lasted from the period of military occupation in the First World War (starting with Basra in November 1914), through to the establishment of King Faisal I on 22 August 1921)  and then to the ending of the League of Nations Mandate on 3 October 1932 when Iraq became a fully independent state. The right hand border of the sheetlet includes a portrait of King Faisal. Rating:- *****.

  🇱🇰 Sri Lanka Post issued a single stamp on 18 December 2021 to commemorate the State Vesak Festival. Rating:- ***.

🇧🇩 The stamp issued by Bangladesh Post on 27 July 2021 (see Blog 1916) to commemorate the 50th Birthday of Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed Joy, the son of the country’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina and a prominent politician in his own right, was withdrawn from sale very quickly after its issue on the orders of Sheikh Hasina from an unknown reason. The stamp has now been reissued in a redrawn format as shown below (the upper illustration shows the redrawn stamp):-

1115. 🇵🇰 Pakistan Commemorates Cricket Victory.

  🇵🇰 Pakistan Post issued a se-tenant strip of 3 stamps and 1 miniature sheet on 2 November 2017 to commemorate the victory of the Pakistan team in the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy competition. A colourful and interesting set. Rating:- *****.

  🇮🇶 In Blog 1112 I wrote about the Balfour Declaration and mentioned the British involvement in the Middle East at that time - that is - 1917 as British Imperial forces tried to wrest away the territories of the Ottoman Empire and help the Arabs to liberate themselves from Ottoman rule. The British invaded and occupied parts of what was to become Iraq and released postage stamps which were old Ottoman stamps with inscriptions overprinted on them which read "Baghdad in British Occupation".

  One hundred years later, the Iraq postal service has issued 3 stamps and 1 miniature sheet to commemorate the centenary of the issue of these stamps. This is an excellent set and very interesting- even if one cannot afford to buy the true stamps of 1917 this Centenary set offers the collector the opportunity to own some facsimiles since 3 of the stamps are depicted on the actual stamps while other values are illustrated on labels which are part of the sheets which contain the basic stamps. See Blog 424.

  Rating:- *****.

  🇲🇿 I recently came across a blog called Filatelia de Moçambique, which dates to 2008 to 2010, where I discovered a stamp of which I was not previously aware. I have in my collection a single stamp issued on 10 June 2006 which commemorates the 25th anniversary of Telecomunicações de Moçambique and this is mentioned in the blog but it also draws attention to the same stamp being reissued in August 2006 with a surcharge applied - 33,000MT/33,00Mtn.

  I have never seen the surcharge being offered for sale anywhere though it may be featured in the latest edition Of Stanley Gibbons Southern Africa Catalogue which unfortunately I have not got round to looking at. Importantly of course, this is a real postage stamp unlike the stuff produced by Stamperija with the name of Mozambique printed on it which is mostly what has been sold as "Mozambique stamps" in recent years. Rating:- *****.