The Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a country located in South Asia bordering a thousand-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea in the south, between India on the east and Iran and Afghanistan on the west, with the Peoples Republic of China on the far northeast.

The name Pakistan means Land of the Pure in Urdu and Persian and was coined in 1933 by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never as an acronym of the names of the "Muslim homelands" of western India:

P for Punjab
A for Afghania (the Afghan areas)
K for Kashmir
S for Sindh and
tan for Baluchistan

An i was later added between K and S to the English rendition of the name so as to to ease pronunciation thus becoming: PAKISTAN

Pakistan was established as a modern state in August 1947 with the separation of British India into two countries: West and East Pakitan and India, which later led to wars separating East with the West Pakistan and resulting in East Pakistan as a separate nation - Bengladesh in 1971.

The Indian subcontinent region has been in the past invaded by the Greeks, the Persians and the Arabs, and was incorporated into British rule in the nineteenth century.

Since independence, Pakistan has seen both instability, with the loss of East Pakistan and wars with India and the ongoing Kashmir issue, and significant military and economic growth. In 2005 the economy was the second-fastest growing economy amongst the ten most populous countries and the twenty-fifth largest economy in terms of purchasing power parity. Pakistan has the seventh largest armed forces in the world and is one of eight declared nuclear powers.

GENERAL FACTS