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Islamic Republic of Pakistan | |
---|---|
Motto: Īmān, Ittihād, Nazam ایمان، اتحاد، نظم "Faith, Unity, Discipline"[2] | |
Anthem: Qaumī Tarānah قَومی ترانہ "The National Anthem" | |
Capital | Islamabad 33°41′30″N 73°03′00″E / 33.69167°N 73.05000°E |
Largest city | Karachi 24°51′36″N 67°00′36″E / 24.86000°N 67.01000°E |
Official languages | |
Native languages | Over 77 languages[4] |
Ethnic groups | See below |
Religion | |
Demonym(s) | Pakistani |
Government | Federal Islamic parliamentary republic |
Asif Ali Zardari | |
Shehbaz Sharif | |
Vacant | |
Ayaz Sadiq | |
Qazi Faez Isa | |
Legislature | Parliament |
Senate | |
National Assembly | |
Independence from the United Kingdom | |
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 | $1.568 trillion[9] (24th) |
• Per capita | $6,773[9] (138th) |
GDP (nominal) | 2023 estimate |
• Total | $340.636 billion[9] (46th) |
• Per capita | $1,471[9] (161st) |
Gini (2018) | 31.6[10] medium |
HDI (2022) | 0.540[11] low (164th) |
Currency | Pakistani rupee (₨) (PKR) |
Time zone | UTC+05:00 (PKT) |
DST is not observed | |
Date format |
|
Driving side | left[12] |
Calling code | +92 |
ISO 3166 code | PK |
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.
Article_2
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).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.
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.
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.
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).
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