Traversing the planet on foot, one begins to notice—up close, in lingering detail, as landscape slides by at three miles per hour—certain repeating patterns of architecture that surely are extremely old, tapping perhaps into the very foundations of human imagination.
Whether it’s the rock mounds of ancient Afar burials in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia, or the endless hillocks of construction spoil dumped pell-mell outside young cities in Saudi Arabia, or the beehive shapes of mud-brick bread ovens in Uzbekistan, it is clear that humankind adores domes. This is no surprise: The dome is a facsimile of heaven, of the cosmos, of the curved lineaments of the sky.
Humanity also loves the predictability of parallel lines. We scratched them onto rock crags in Jordan during the early Bronze Age. (Perhaps symbolizing rain.) And who hasn’t been mesmerized by the arrow-straight furrows of tilled fields anywhere—say, in Turkey?
Then there are colossal flagpoles.
I encountered my first humongous flagpole more than two years ago while walking into downtown Baku, the ultra-modern capital of Azerbaijan. I recall craning my neck sunward, as if in worship, thinking: This is a big flagpole. (It is almost 532 feet tall.) My local walking partner, Rufat Gojayev, agreed, adding melancholically, “It was the biggest in the world until Tajikistan made one a few centimeters higher.”
View of the once tallest flagpole in the world. Baku, Azerbaijan.
Paul Salopek
I was reminded of that now distant titanic flagpole sighting as I stumbled recently across none other than the object of Gojayev’s envy: a 541-foot flagpole in the central square of Dushanbe, Tajikistan. It soared into the dusk sky carrying a national flag that supposedly also weighs 1,500 pounds. It occurred to me that I was probably the only human being who had walked 2,300 miles between the two massive poles. My Tajik friends told me darkly that some other country, rumored to be in the Middle East, had already built a taller flagpole, eclipsing theirs.
The company behind all this flagpole envy is American.
Trident Support, based in San Diego and with offices in the United Arab Emirates, got into the business in 2001, building a 400-foot-plus pole in Abu Dhabi. Since then it has erected mammoth flagpoles across the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as big poles in Africa and India.
Building gigantic flagpoles is certainly easier than building democratic institutions, but it’s nonetheless a daunting engineering task. And in any case, a flagpole race is to be preferred to an arms race. So I emailed a Trident Support executive, Marc Summers, and he graciously answered a few questions. The exchange below has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Paul Salopek: Which country now hosts your largest flagpole?
Marc Summers: Our tallest flagpole is currently in Tajikistan at 541 feet. It is one of six world-record flagpoles we've built over the years: Baku, Azerbaijan: 531 feet; Ashgabat, Turkmenistan: 436 feet; Aqaba, Jordan: 433 feet; Amman, Jordan 417 feet; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: 404 feet. The current tallest flagpole in the world is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia at 558 feet. We were awarded the contract to build this flagpole in 2012, but after receiving the award, the negotiations continued with many unacceptable and onerous conditions thrown in. We ultimately walked away, and the project was awarded to a local Saudi lighting mast company. We’re currently in negotiation with several consortiums in different countries to build the next world-record flagpole though, taller than the Jeddah pole.
PS: How did you get into the giant flagpole business?
MS: We were working in the United Arab Emirates doing defense logistics work for a local company. One of our high-level associates and business sponsors in the UAE said they wanted to build a “big flagpole” in Abu Dhabi as a monument, and asked us if we could do that. Of course we said yes. He then told us he wanted the tallest flagpole in the world. We did some basic research and found that Guinness listed the flagpole in North Korea as the “tallest flagpole in the world,” at 525 feet, but when we looked at it, it really isn’t a flagpole but more like a radio tower with a flag on top. We got Guinness to create a new category of “tallest free-standing flagpole” and built the 404-foot world record Monumental Flagpole in Abu Dhabi in 2001. Through that endeavor, we started getting calls from other clients.
PS: What’s it like negotiating with countries that want record-breaking flagpoles—knowing that, sooner or later, some other government will want to surpass it?
MS: Obviously we have had many customers who wanted us to guarantee that we wouldn’t build a taller flagpole—we explain that if we don’t build it, someone else probably will, so really our guarantee wouldn’t be worth that much to them. But we've offered a yearly incentive fee-guarantee contract to customers that would provide us compensation for lost business, and in turn we would guarantee we will not offer or accept any other contracts to build a taller flagpole. Unfortunately no one has ever taken us up on that offer to be paid not to work.
Also, from a practical standpoint, we discuss that although there may be a taller flagpole somewhere, someday, the main reason they are building their flagpole is to establish a grandiose and impressive national monument—so the world record, while nice, is not the primary reason for the flagpole.
PS: There must be a limit to the height of flagpoles, given current building materials. Any idea how high that might be?
MS: I wouldn’t say there’s a limit. With enough time and money, most things can be overcome. The limiting factors we have seen in our present methodology is the availability of suitable cranes, but this can be overcome with other, more expensive lifting technology. Also, lighter, stronger material may also be a solution for taller flagpoles, but again cost comes into the equation. We think that our present concept and methods are suitable for flagpoles up to around 660 feet or perhaps 720 feet without a major change in concept. But we will have to let our engineers work out the calculations and design to see if if we can go higher, assuming there’s a customer willing to pay the price. In the meantime we’re more than happy building 400-foot poles or 250-foot poles—which are easier, quicker, more affordable, and almost equally impressive visually—albeit not with the Guinness World Record certificate to hang on the wall.
