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Fate has not been as kind to most of the former Soviet republics as they might have hoped when they won independence just over 20 years ago.

Take Azerbaijan for example. Its income stream is almost exclusively from the oil and gas it has inherited, but Azerbaijan is missing something - about 20 per cent of its territory: it lost control of the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh during a war with Armenia which started in 1991.

If Azerbaijan is to take it back one day - which would require extreme force - a national symbol is needed to help get the masses on board. In 2010, Baku duly put up the world's largest flagpole; at 162 metres tall, it looks out over the Caspian Sea.

It is not difficult to imagine what the Azerbaijani leadership's reactions must have been, therefore, when their former Soviet brethren, the Tajikistanis, put up a 165-metre flagpole in Dushanbe, late last year. Tajikistan is the former Soviet Union's poorest country and its consolidation after years of civil war is still a major challenge.

Turkmenistan, long the region's most idiosyncratic country, started the contest, getting the world record back in 2008. Erected on President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow's birthday, the motivation here seems to have been to maintain his cult of personality. Repressive even by the standards of Central Asia, Turkmenistan stifles the merest hint of opposition.

For the record then, and in descending order, the world's tallest flagpoles are in Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Jordan, Abu Dhabi and Malaysia. Egypt and North Korea could enter a more generous list at first and fourth position - their flags fly from masts resembling large pylons. Britain's tallest flagpole - at London's

Kew Gardens - once measured 69 metres but was dismantled in 2007. America, which has been exporting these cloud-touching giants, does only slightly better with a 94-metre effort, in Laredo, Texas.There is no single reason for this seemingly pointless activity. For a relatively young country which feels its economy, security or identity threatened, it's an easy fix. And cheaper to run than a tank. Or a school. Or a hospital.