Pakistan (Urdu: پاكِستان, Pākistān), formally the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia, on the Indian Ocean. The country has 225 million inhabitants and is 20 times the size of the Netherlands. The capital is Islamabad, the largest city is Karachi.

Geography

According to ABBREVIATIONFINDER, Pakistan is a large country, located on the Indian Ocean. The country borders Iran and Afghanistan to the west, China to the northeast and Indiain the East. The Kashmir region is a disputed territory, of which Pakistan controls the northern part and India controls the southern part. Pakistan measures a maximum of 1,500 kilometers from north to south and 1,200 kilometers from west to east. The country has a varied landscape, the densely populated Indus Valley is flat and has many large tributaries in the east of Pakistan. The border area with India is formed by the flat Thar Desert. Southwestern Pakistan consists of sparsely populated desert with mountain ranges. The border area with Afghanistan is also mountainous. The highest mountains in western Pakistan have peaks of up to 3,000-3,500 meters. The far north of Pakistan is much more mountainous, with the Hindu Kush Mountains and the Karakoram Range, part of the Himalayas. This area has numerous peaks of more than 7. 000 meters altitude and is heavily glaciated and permanently covered with snow. The 8,611 meter high K2 is located on the border with China and is the second highest mountain in the world.

Pakistan is divided into just four provinces (Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab & Sindh), a Federal Territory (Islamabad), two Autonomous Territories (Gilgit-Baltistan & Azad Kashmir) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The provinces are very large, Balochistan comprises almost half of Pakistan.

Economy

Pakistan has a fairly large economy, but due to its large population, it is one of the poorer countries in Asia. The nominal GDP per capita is only $1,500. The most developed is the valley of the Indus and the big cities like Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi. The capital Islamabad is the most modern city in Pakistan and was built mainly from the 1960s. Pakistan’s economy is only partially industrialized. The middle class is quite small and concentrated in the big cities. A large part of the population is poor. In particular, the border regions with Afghanistan are hardly developed and have no monetary economy. Western Balochistan is also underdeveloped, although efforts are being made to develop a new economic center around the port city of Gwadar.

An ongoing problem in Pakistan is the lack of opportunities to collect taxes. Less than 10 percent of GDP comes from taxes, which is lower than, say, India. Pakistan has needed a large number of bailouts from the IMF, especially since the 1980s. The country is also saddled with high debts, including to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, of which it is the largest recipient of Chinese loans for megaprojects.

Pakistan’s main exports are textiles, clothing and agricultural products. The country has relatively few raw materials. Electricity production cannot keep up with demand. A major problem for the Pakistani economy is instability and regional conflict.

Demographics

Pakistan has 202 million inhabitants and a rapidly growing population, in 1970 the country still had 60 million inhabitants. Overpopulation is a serious problem, partly because there are only a limited number of large cities. See Pakistan population density. Karachi is by far the largest city with over 23 million inhabitants. Lahore also has more than 10 million inhabitants. Other megacities are Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Multan, Gujranwala, Islamabad and Quetta. The Indus River valley is densely populated with very densely populated countryside.

Pakistan is ethnically divided into four major groups, the Punjabi in the east, the Sindhi in the south, the Baluchis in the southwest, and the Pashtu in the west. Broadly speaking, the country can be divided into the Indo-Aryans east of the Indus and Iranian ethnicities west of the Indus. These are more diverse due to the migration from the countryside to the big cities. Pakistan is also linguistically diverse, with no language having a majority. Six languages ​​are spoken by a total of 95 percent of the population, although there are still many minor regional languages. The umbrella language is Urdu, which is spoken as a mother tongue by relatively few residents, but is spoken as a second language by a large part of Pakistanis. Most Pakistanis know at least two or three languages.

History

The country that is now Pakistan fell under the British Empire in the mid-19th century, and was then known as India. In 1947, India was divided into Pakistan and India, with borders drawn largely to religious divisions, Islamic Pakistan and East Pakistan, and India. The capital of the new country of Pakistan was Karachi. Later this temporarily became Rawalpindi and finally from 1966 the new city of Islamabad. In 1971 East Pakistan seceded from Pakistan and became Bangladesh. The two countries were 1,600 kilometers apart, with India in between.

A point of contention between Pakistan and India is the Kashmir region, a very mountainous region in the western Himalayas. Immediately after the partition of India in 1947, the first war was fought in Kashmir. The Line of Control between Pakistan and India arose from this. This is not a legally established international border, but de facto the border between the two countries. In 1965 another short but fierce war was fought between the two countries, with the largest tank battle since the Second World War. In 1971, during the independence of East Pakistan (Bangladesh), another war was fought, with the most deaths, but not for the Kashmir region. The Kashmir region remains unsettled with frequent incidents of death.

Because of its relations with India, Pakistan maintains a large army, and the country has had nuclear weapons since the 1970s. After 2001, the war in Afghanistan swept into Pakistan, with ongoing violence and attacks, particularly in the border region. Pakistan’s contribution to the war on terror is one of the largest of any country, costing the country tens of billions of dollars. Pakistan is therefore supported by the United States. In 2011, the world’s most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden was killed in Pakistan.