Pakistan

Islamic Republic of Pakistan
  • اسلامی جمہوریہ پاكستان (Urdu)
  • Islāmī Jumhūriyah Pākistān[1]
Motto: Īmān, Ittihād, Nazam
ایمان، اتحاد، نظم
"Faith, Unity, Discipline"[2]
Anthem: Qaumī Tarānah
قَومی ترانہ
"The National Anthem"
Land controlled by Pakistan shown in dark green; land claimed but not controlled shown in light green
Land controlled by Pakistan shown in dark green; land claimed but not controlled shown in light green
CapitalIslamabad
33°41′30″N 73°03′00″E / 33.69167°N 73.05000°E / 33.69167; 73.05000
Largest cityKarachi
24°51′36″N 67°00′36″E / 24.86000°N 67.01000°E / 24.86000; 67.01000
Official languages
Native languagesOver 77 languages[4]
Ethnic groups
See below
Religion
Demonym(s)Pakistani
GovernmentFederal Islamic parliamentary republic
• President
Asif Ali Zardari
Shehbaz Sharif
Vacant
Ayaz Sadiq
Qazi Faez Isa
LegislatureParliament
Senate
National Assembly
Independence 
23 March 1940
14 August 1947
• Republic
23 March 1956
8 December 1958
16 December 1971
14 August 1973
Area
• Total
881,913 km2 (340,509 sq mi)[b][7] (33rd)
• Water (%)
2.86
Population
• 2023 census
241,499,431[c] (5th)
• Density
273.8/km2 (709.1/sq mi) (56th)
GDP (PPP)2023 estimate
• Total
Increase $1.568 trillion[9] (24th)
• Per capita
Increase $6,773[9] (138th)
GDP (nominal)2023 estimate
• Total
Decrease $340.636 billion[9] (46th)
• Per capita
Decrease $1,471[9] (161st)
Gini (2018)Positive decrease 31.6[10]
medium
HDI (2022)Increase 0.540[11]
low (164th)
CurrencyPakistani rupee (₨) (PKR)
Time zoneUTC+05:00 (PKT)
DST is not observed
Date format
Driving sideleft[12]
Calling code+92
ISO 3166 codePK
Internet TLD

Pakistan,[e] officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,[f] is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the second-largest Muslim population as of 2023.[8] Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area, 9th largest in Asia and the second-largest in South Asia. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east; Afghanistan to the west; Iran to the southwest; and China to the northeast. It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor.

Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan,[13] the Indus Valley civilisation of the Bronze Age,[14][15] and the ancient Gandhara civilisation.[16] The regions that comprise the modern state of Pakistan were the realm of multiple empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid, the Maurya, the Kushan, the Gupta;[17] the Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, the Samma, the Hindu Shahis, the Shah Miris, the Ghaznavids, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals,[18] and most recently, the British Raj from 1858 to 1947.

Spurred by the Pakistan Movement, which sought a homeland for the Muslims of British India, and election victories in 1946 by the All-India Muslim League, Pakistan gained independence in 1947 after the Partition of the British Indian Empire, which awarded separate statehood to its Muslim-majority regions and was accompanied by an unparalleled mass migration and loss of life.[19] Initially a Dominion of the British Commonwealth, Pakistan officially drafted its constitution in 1956, and emerged as a declared Islamic republic. In 1971, the exclave of East Pakistan seceded as the new country of Bangladesh after a nine-month-long civil war. In the following four decades, Pakistan has been ruled by governments whose descriptions, although complex, commonly alternated between civilian and military, democratic and authoritarian, relatively secular and Islamist.[20] Pakistan elected a civilian government in 2008, and in 2010 adopted a parliamentary system with periodic elections.[21]

Pakistan is considered a middle power nation,[22][23][24][25][26][27] with the world's sixth-largest standing armed forces. It is a declared nuclear-weapons state, and is ranked amongst the emerging and growth-leading economies,[28] with a large and rapidly-growing middle class.[29] Pakistan's political history since independence has been characterized by periods of significant economic and military growth as well as those of political and economic instability. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. The country continues to face challenges, including poverty, illiteracy, corruption, and terrorism.[30] Pakistan is a member of the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Commonwealth of Nations, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and the Islamic Military Counter-Terrorism Coalition, and is designated as a major non-NATO ally by the United States.

  1. ^ Minahan, James (2009). The Complete Guide to National Symbols and Emblems [2 volumes]. ABC-CLIO. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-313-34497-8.
  2. ^ "The State Emblem". Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of Pakistan. Archived from the original on 1 July 2007. Retrieved 18 December 2013.
  3. ^ "Article 251: National language". pakistanconstitutionlaw.com. 20 April 2021. Retrieved 23 July 2018.
  4. ^ Ethnologue 2022.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference Article_2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ "Pakistan statistics". Geohive. Archived from the original on 6 April 2013. Retrieved 20 April 2013.
  7. ^ "Where is Pakistan?". worldatlas.com. 24 February 2021.
  8. ^ a b "Announcement of Results of 7th Population and Housing Census-2023 'The Digital Census'" (PDF). Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (www.pbs.gov.pk). 5 August 2023. Retrieved 15 August 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d "World Economic Outlook Database, October 2023 Edition. (Pakistan)". IMF.org. International Monetary Fund. 10 October 2023. Retrieved 12 October 2023.
  10. ^ "Gini Index". World Bank. Retrieved 12 August 2021.
  11. ^ "Human Development Report 2023/2024" (PDF). United Nations Development Programme. 2024. Retrieved 21 March 2024.
  12. ^ Loureiro, Miguel (28 July 2005). "Driving—the good, the bad and the ugly". Daily Times. Pakistan. Archived from the original on 10 January 2012. Retrieved 6 February 2014.
  13. ^ Coningham, Robin; Young, Ruth (2015), The Archaeology of South Asia: From the Indus to Asoka, c. 6500 BCE – 200 CE, Cambridge University Press Quote: ""Mehrgarh remains one of the key sites in South Asia because it has provided the earliest known undisputed evidence for farming and pastoral communities in the region, and its plant and animal material provide clear evidence for the ongoing manipulation, and domestication, of certain species. Perhaps most importantly in a South Asian context, the role played by zebu makes this a distinctive, localised development, with a character completely different from other parts of the world. Finally, the longevity of the site, and its articulation with the neighbouring site of Nausharo (c. 2800—2000 BCE), provides a very clear continuity from South Asia's first farming villages to the emergence of its first cities (Jarrige, 1984)."
  14. ^ Wright 2009, pp. 1–2:Quote: "The Indus civilisation is one of three in the 'Ancient East' that, along with Mesopotamia and Pharaonic Egypt, was a cradle of early civilisation in the Old World (Childe, 1950). Mesopotamia and Egypt were longer lived, but coexisted with Indus civilisation during its florescence between 2600 and 1900 B.C. Of the three, the Indus was the most expansive, extending from today's northeast Afghanistan to Pakistan and India."
  15. ^ Allchin, Bridget; Allchin, Raymond (1982), The Rise of Civilization in India and Pakistan, Cambridge University Press, p. 81131, ISBN 978-0-521-28550-6, During the second half of the fourth and early part of the third millennium B.C., a new development begins to become apparent in the greater Indus system, which we can now see to be a formative stage underlying the Mature Indus of the middle and late third millennium. This development seems to have involved the whole Indus system, and to a lesser extent the Indo-Iranian borderlands to its west, but largely left untouched the subcontinent east of the Indus system.
  16. ^ Badian, Ernst (1987), "Alexander at Peucelaotis", The Classical Quarterly, 37 (1): 117–128, doi:10.1017/S0009838800031712, JSTOR 639350, S2CID 246878679
  17. ^ Wynbrandt, James (2009). A Brief History of Pakistan. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8160-6184-6.
  18. ^ Spuler, Bertold (1969). The Muslim World: a Historical Survey. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill. ISBN 90-04-02104-3.
  19. ^ Copland, Ian (2001), India, 1885–1947: The Unmaking of an Empire, Seminar Studies in History, Longman, ISBN 978-0-582-38173-5 Quote: "However, the real turning point for the new Muslim League came with the general election of December 1945 and January 1946. Despite facing a rejuvenated Congress, the League won four-fifths of all the Muslim-reserved seats ... The result left no one, not least the British, in doubt about where the locus of power within the Muslim community now lay (p. 71) ... In most respects, therefore, the League's success in the elections of 1945–46 can be interpreted as a clear Muslim mandate for Pakistan. (p 72)"
    - Metcalf, Barbara D.; Metcalf, Thomas R. (2006), A Concise History of Modern India, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-1-139-45887-0 Quote: "The loss of life was immense, with estimates ranging from several hundred thousand up to a million. But, even for those who survived, fear generated a widespread perception that one could be safe only among members of one's own community; and this in turn helped consolidate loyalties towards the state, whether India or Pakistan, in which one might find a secure haven. This was especially important for Pakistan, where the succour it offered to Muslims gave that state for the first time a visible territorial reality. Fear too drove forward a mass migration unparalleled in the history of South Asia. ... Overall, partition uprooted some 12.5 million of undivided India's people."
  20. ^ Talbot, Ian (2016), A History of Modern South Asia: Politics, States, Diasporas, Yale University Press, pp. 227–240, ISBN 978-0-300-21659-2
  21. ^ "Pakistani parties to share power". BBC News. 9 March 2008.
    - "Pakistan to curb president powers". BBC News. 8 April 2010.
  22. ^ Buzan, Barry; Wæver, Ole (2003). Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security. Cambridge University Press. p. 55. ISBN 978-0-521-89111-0. In the framework of their regional security complex theory (RSCT), Barry Buzan and Ole Waever differentiate between superpowers and great powers which act and influence the global level (or system level) and regional powers whose influence may be large in their regions but have less effect at the global level. This category of regional powers includes Brazil, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey.
  23. ^ Rajagopalan, Rajesh (2011), "Pakistan: regional power, global problem?", in Nadine Godehardt; Dirk Nabers (eds.), Regional Orders and Regional Powers, Routledge, pp. 193–208, ISBN 978-1-136-71891-5
  24. ^ Paul, T. V. (2012). International Relations Theory and Regional Transformation. Cambridge University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-1-107-02021-4. Retrieved 3 February 2017. The regional powers such as Israel or Pakistan are not simple bystanders of great power politics in their regions; they attempt to asymmetrically influence the major power system often in their own distinct ways.
  25. ^ Barry Buzan (2004). The United States and the great powers: world politics in the twenty-first century. Polity. pp. 71, 99. ISBN 978-0-7456-3374-9. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
  26. ^ Hussein Solomon. "South African Foreign Policy and Middle Power Leadership". Archived from the original on 24 June 2002. Retrieved 27 December 2011.
  27. ^ Vandamme, Dorothee. "Pakistan and Saudi Arabia : Towards Greater Independence in their Afghan Foreign Policy?" (PDF). Université catholique de Louvain. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 October 2017. Retrieved 21 December 2016. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have enough influence to not be considered small, but not enough to be major powers. Within the limits of their regions, they play a significant political role. Thus instinctively, they would qualify as middle powers. While it is not the objective here to question the characteristics of Jordan's definition of middle powers, we argue that Pakistan is in fact a middle power despite its being nuclear-armed. When looking at the numbers, for instance, it appears that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan can be classified as middle powers (see in this regard Ping, 2007).
  28. ^ Iqbal, Anwar (8 November 2015). "Pakistan an emerging market economy: IMF". www.dawn.com. Retrieved 27 February 2016.
    - Kaplan, Seth. "Is Pakistan an emerging market?". Retrieved 27 February 2016.
  29. ^ "Pakistan has 18th largest 'middle class' in the world: report". The Express Tribune. 16 October 2015.
    - "GDP ranking | Data". data.worldbank.org. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
  30. ^ Mathew Joseph C. (2016). Understanding Pakistan: Emerging Voices from India. Taylor & Francis. p. 337. ISBN 978-1-351-99725-6.
    - "Poverty in Pakistan: Numerous efforts, many numbers, not enough results". aiddata.org.
    - "70% decline in terrorist attacks in Pakistan – ". The Express Tribune. 9 September 2015.


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