PAKISTAN
This web page is to give people the general understanding of PAKISTAN. People will learn where it is located, how big the country is, and what kind of people live there. This page is for mostly college students, tourists, adult learners and the military.
Flag of Pakistan
The Pakistan flag was designed by a man named Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah. He is also the founder of Pakistan. The national flag of Pakistan is dark green with a white bar and a white cresent moon in the center and a five point star. The white and green represents Minorities & Muslim majority. The cresent moon represents progress and the five point star represents light and knowledge.
Map of Pakistan
Geography of Pakistan
Pakistan is located in South Asia where it shares the eastern border with India and the northeastern border with China. Iran makes up the south-west border and the Arabian Sea is the southern boundary with 1064 km of coastline. Pakistan takes up a total of 796,095 sq km and is nearly four times the size of the United Kingdom. The northern and western parts of Pakistan contain the towering Karakoram and Pamir mountain ranges, which include some of the worlds highest peaks, such as: K2 (28,250 ft; 8,611m) and Nanga Pardat (26,660 ft; 8,126m). The Baluchistan Plateau lies to the west, and the Thar Desert and an expanse of alluvial plains, the Punjab and Sind, lie to the east. The 1,000-mile-long (1,609 km) Indus River and its tributaries flow through the country from the Kashmir region to the Arabian Sea. Pakistan is about twice the size of California.
History of Pakistan
Pakistan was one of the two original successor states to British
India, which was partitioned along with religious lines in 1947. For almost 25
years following independence, it consisted of two separate regions, East and
West Pakistan, but now it is made up only of the western sector. Both India and
Pakistan have laid claim to the Kashmir region; this territorial dispute led to
war in 1949, 1965, 1971, and 1999, and remains unresolved today.
What is
now Pakistan was in prehistoric times the Indus Valley civilization (c.
2500–1700 B.C.). A series of invaders—Aryans, Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks,
and others—controlled the region for the next several thousand years. Islam, the
principal religion, was introduced in 711. In 1526, the land became part of the
Mogul Empire, which ruled most of the Indian subcontinent from the 16th to the
mid-18th century. By 1857, the British became the dominant power in the region.
With Hindus holding most of the economic, social, and political advantages, the
Muslim minority's dissatisfaction grew, leading to the formation of the
nationalist Muslim League in 1906 by Mohammed Ali Jinnah (1876–1949). The league
supported Britain in the Second World War while the Hindu nationalist leaders,
Nehru and Gandhi, refused. In return for the league's support of Britain, Jinnah
expected British backing for Muslim autonomy. Britain agreed to the formation of
Pakistan as a separate dominion within the Commonwealth in Aug. 1947, a bitter
disappointment to India's dream of a unified subcontinent. Jinnah became
governor-general. The partition of Pakistan and India along religious lines
resulted in the largest migration in human history, with 17 million people
fleeing across the borders in both directions to escape the sectarian violence
accompanying the partition.
Pakistan became a republic on March 23,
1956, with Maj. Gen. Iskander Mirza as the first president. Military rule
prevailed for the next two decades. Tensions between East and West Pakistan
existed from the outset. Separated by more than a thousand miles, the two
regions shared few cultural and social traditions other than religion. To the
growing resentment of East Pakistan, the West monopolized the country's
political and economic power. In 1970, East Pakistan's Awami League, led by the
Bengali leader Sheik Mujibur Rahman, secured a majority of the seats in the
National Assembly. President Yahya Khan postponed the opening of the National
Assembly to skirt East Pakistan's demand for greater autonomy, provoking civil
war. The independent state of Bangladesh, or Bengali nation, was proclaimed on
March 26, 1971. Indian troops entered the war in its last weeks fighting on the
side of the new state. Pakistan was defeated on Dec. 16, 1971, and President
Yahya Khan stepped down. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over Pakistan and accepted
Bangladesh as an independent entity. In 1976, formal relations between India and
Pakistan resumed.
Pakistan's first elections under civilian rule took
place in March 1977, and the overwhelming victory of Bhutto's Pakistan People's
Party (PPP) was denounced as fraudulent. A rising tide of violent protest and
political deadlock led to a military takeover on July 5 by Gen. Mohammed Zia
ul-Haq. Bhutto was tried and convicted for the 1974 murder of a political
opponent, and despite worldwide protests he was executed on April 4, 1979,
touching off riots by his supporters. Zia declared himself president on Sept.
16, 1978, and ruled by martial law until Dec. 30, 1985, when a measure of
representative government was restored. On Aug. 19, 1988, Zia was killed in a
midair explosion of a Pakistani Air Force plane. Elections at the end of 1988
brought longtime Zia opponent Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Bhutto, into
office as prime minister.
In the 1990s, Pakistan saw a shaky succession
of governments—Benazir Bhutto was prime minister twice and Nawaz Sharif three
times, until he was deposed in a coup on Oct. 12, 1999, by Gen. Pervez
Musharraf. The Pakistani public, familiar with military rule for 25 of the
nation's 52-year history, generally viewed the coup as a positive step and hoped
it would bring a badly needed economic upswing.
To the surprise of much
of the world, two new nuclear powers emerged in May 1998 when India, followed by
Pakistan just weeks later, conducted nuclear tests. Fighting with India again
broke out in the disputed territory of Kashmir in May 1999.
Close ties
with Afghanistan's Taliban government thrust Pakistan into a difficult position
following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Under U.S. pressure,
Pakistan broke with its neighbor to become the United States' chief ally in the
region. In return, President Bush ended sanctions (instituted after Pakistan's
testing of nuclear weapons in 1998), rescheduled its debt, and helped to bolster
the legitimacy of the rule of Pervez Musharraf, who appointed himself president
in 2001.
On Dec. 13, 2001, suicide bombers attacked the Indian
Parliament, killing 14 people, including 5 assailants. Indian officials blamed
the attack on Islamic militants supported by Pakistan. Both sides assembled
hundreds of thousands of troops along their common border, bringing the two
nuclear powers to the brink of war.
In April 2002, voters overwhelmingly
approved a referendum to extend Musharraf's presidency for another five years.
The vote, however, outraged opposing political parties and human rights groups
that said the process was rigged. In August, he unveiled 29 constitutional
amendments that strengthened his grip on the country.
Pakistani
officials dealt a heavy blow to al-Qaeda in March 2003, arresting Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, the top aide to Osama bin Laden, who organized the 2001 terrorist
attacks against the U.S. The search for bin Laden intensified in northern
Pakistan following Mohammed's arrest.
In Nov. 2003, Pakistan and India
declared the first formal cease-fire in Kashmir in 14 years. In April 2005, a
bus service began between the two capitals of Kashmir—Srinagar on the Indian
side and Pakistan's Muzaffarabad—uniting families that had been separated by the
Line of Control since 1947.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's
nuclear bomb, was exposed in Feb. 2004 for having sold nuclear secrets to North
Korea, Iran, and Libya. Musharraf had him apologize publicly, and then pardoned
him. While much of the world reviled him for this unconscionable act of nuclear
proliferation, the scientist remains a national hero in Pakistan. Khan claimed
that he alone and not Pakistan's military or government was involved in the
selling of these ultraclassified secrets; few in the international community
have accepted this explanation.
President Musharraf declared in December
2004 that he would retain his post as head of the army, a reversal of an earlier
promise.
President Bush said in March 2005 that the U.S. would sell
Pakistan F-16 fighter jets. Pakistan had been trying to buy the planes since
1990 but had been repeatedly denied because of its nuclear-weapons programs. In
what was considered an attempt to balance the offer to Pakistan, Bush also would
allow American companies to provide India with several types of modern combat
weapons, including F-16s and F-18s. After October's devastating earthquake that
will cost the country about $5 billion in reconstruction, President Musharraf
postponed the purchase of the F-16s.
Pakistani officials announced that
three of the four suicide bombers who attacked London's transit system in July
2005 had visited Pakistan in 2004. Days later, about 200 suspected Islamic
militants were detained after a series of raids on mosques and madrassas.
Despite the move, many have questioned President Musharraf's sincerity in
rooting out militants and remnants of the Taliban. Indeed, during the summer of
2005, violence intensified in the mountainous North and South Waziristan
regions, which border Afghanistan, suggesting that the insurgents are
regrouping.
An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.6 struck
Pakistani-controlled Kashmir on October 8, 2005. More than 81,000 people were
killed and 3 million left homeless. About half of the region’s capital city,
Muzaffarabad, was destroyed. The disaster hit at the onset the Himalayan winter.
Many rural villages were too remote for aid workers to reach, leaving thousands
vulnerable to the elements. A shortage of tents only increased frustration and
sense of helplessness felt by the Kashmiris. India suffered about 1,300
casualties.
People of Pakistan
WEB LINKS