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| The Islamic Republic of Pakistan (پاکستان in Urdu), or Pakistan, is a country located in South Asia. Pakistan borders India, Iran, Afghanistan, China and the Arabian Sea. With just under 160 million inhabitants it is the sixth most populous country in the world. It is the second largest Muslim country in the world, after Indonesia and an important member of the OIC. Culturally and geographically rich, Pakistan has endless tourist attractions throughout its vast scenic lands and many of the highest mountains and mountain ranges in the world. | | The '''Islamic Republic of Pakistan''' (پاکستان in Urdu), or '''Pakistan''', is a country located in South Asia that was formed on 14 August 1947 from the previous country known as "British India". Pakistan borders [[India]], Iran, Afghanistan, China and the Arabian Sea. With just under 160 million inhabitants it is the sixth most populous country in the world. It is the second largest [[Muslim]] country in the world, after Indonesia but [[India]] is home to more Muslims than Pakistan. |
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| اسلامی جموریت پاکستان
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| Islami Jamhuria Pakistan
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| (In Detail) (In Detail)
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| National motto: Iman, Ittehad, Nazm
| | [[Hindus]], [[Buddhist]]s, [[Sikh]]s, and [[Christian]]s in [[Pakistan]] also celebrate their own festivals and holidays. [[Sikh]]s come from across the world to visit several holy sites in [[Punjab]], including the shrine of [[Guru Nanak]], the founder of [[Sikhism]], at [[Hassan Abdal]] in the Attock District, and his birthplace, at [[Nankana Sahib]]. Many other important early historical Sikh shrines are found in Pakistan. Many thousands of Sikhs from all parts of the world visit Pakistan every year to pay homage to these sacred shrines. Local Pakistani community is very welcoming to these pilgrims. |
| (Urdu: Hisham is our leader)
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| Official languages Urdu, English, Panjabi, Pashto, [[Sindhi]kasim], and Baluchi
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| Capital Islamabad
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| Largest city Karachi
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| President General Pervez Musharraf (via referendum)
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| Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz
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| Area
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| - Total
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| - % water Ranked 34th
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| 803,940 km²
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| 3.1%
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| Population
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| - Total (2003)
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| - Density Ranked 6th
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| 150,694,740
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| 188/km²
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| Independence August 14, 1947 (from the UK)
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| Republic March 23, 1956
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| Religion Islam
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| Currency Pakistani Rupee
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| Currency Code PKR
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| Time zone UTC +5
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| National anthem Pak sarzamin shad bad
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| (Blessed Be The Sacred Land)
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| National animal Markhor
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| Internet TLD .pk
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| Calling Code 92
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| National game Field Hockey
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| Contents [showhide]
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| 1 History
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| 1.1 Pakistan movement
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| 1.2 Origin of Name
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| 1.3 Independence
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| 1.4 Front-line state in the anti-Soviet Afghan war
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| 1.5 Civilian Democracy
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| 1.6 Recent history
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| 2 Politics
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| 2.1 Political Parties
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| 2.2 Form of Government
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| 2.3 Recent Political History
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| 3 Subdivisions
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| 4 Geography
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| 5 Economy
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| 5.1 Overview
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| 5.2 Macroeconomic reform and prospects
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| 5.3 Large middle class
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| 5.4 Economic resilience
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| 5.5 Stock market
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| 5.6 Currency
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| 5.7 Manufacturing and finance
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| 5.8 Tax incentives for IT industry
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| 6 Demographics
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| 6.1 Large population and decelerating population growth
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| 6.2 Religion
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| 6.3 Languages
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| 6.4 Ethnic groups
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| 7 Society and culture
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| 7.1 Roots
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| 7.2 Film and television
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| 7.3 Globalization
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| 7.4 Sports
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| 7.5 Shopping
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| 7.6 Technology and the Internet
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| 8 Notes
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| 9 See also
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| 10 External links
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| 10.1 Pakistani Government Links
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| 10.2 Pakistani Publications & News
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| 10.3 Maps of Major Cities
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| 10.4 Technology
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| 10.5 Other external links
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| [edit]
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| History
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| Main articles: History of Pakistan, History of South Asia, Prime Minister of Pakistan
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| Pakistan movement
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| Ancient Gandhara Buddhist Monastery at Takht Bahi, PakistanPakistan is a nation with an ancient past. Straddling the civilizations of South Asia and the Middle East, Pakistan has a historical past that overlaps into both India and the Iranian plateau and Central Asia. Over the centuries, Pakistan had been invaded by the Aryans (both of the Indo-Aryan and Iranian branches), Persians, Greeks, Kushans, Arabs, Central Asian Turks, and various other more obscure groups that did not penetrate into India proper. These invasions began to separate Pakistan from the historical currents that dominated Indian history even prior to Islam and yet eastern Pakistan would remain somewhat culturally allied to adjacent regions in India, while western Pakistan emerged as an extension of the Perso-Afghan civilization dominated by the Pashtuns and Baluch. Buddhism was a dominant religion prior to coming of Islam.
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| The country that is now Pakistan was part of British India until August 14, 1947. The first proponents of an independent Muslim nation began to appear in the early 20th Century under the British Raj. Late in the 19th Century, leaders like Sir Syed expressed despair about Hindu-Muslim relations, though he still took the position that Muslims should stay out of politics (which was his reaction at being invited to join the nascent Indian National Congress). Soon after his death, however, the All India Muslim League was founded on the sidelines of the 1905 conference of the Mohammadan Anglo-Oriental Conference (an organization he had founded). This party was not, right up till 1940, separatist. The idea of a separate nation was mooted in humor, satire and on the fringes of the political milieu.
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| Among the first to make the demand for a separate state was the writer/philosopher Allama Iqbal, who, in his Presidential Address to the 1930 convention of the Muslim League said that he felt that a separate nation for Muslims was essential in an otherwise Hindu-dominated subcontinent. The Sindh Assembly passed a resolution making it a demand in 1935. Iqbal, Jauhar and others then worked hard to draft Mohammad Ali Jinnah to lead the movement for this new nation. By 1930, Jinnah had despaired of Indian politics, particularly getting mainstream parties like the Congress (of which he was a member much longer than the League) to be sensitive to minority priorities. He went on to become known as the Father of the Nation, with Pakistan officially giving him the title Quaid-e-Azam or "Great Leader". [See ]British Commonwealth. In the early days of independence, more than two million people migrated across the new border and more than one hundred thousand died.
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| Origin of Name
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| The name was coined by Cambridge student and Muslim nationalist Choudhary Rahmat Ali. He devised the word and first published it on January 28, 1933 in the pamphlet Now or Never [1] (http://www.zyworld.com/slam33/non.htm). He saw it as an acronym formed from the names of the "homelands" of Muslims in South Asia. (P for Punjab, A for the Afghan areas of the region, K for Kashmir, S for Sindh and tan for Baluchistan, thus forming 'Pakstan.' An 'i' was later added to the English rendition of the name to ease pronunciation, producing Pakistan.) The word also captured in the Persian language the concepts of "Pak" meaning "Pure" and "stan" for "land" or "home" (as in the names of Central Asian countries in the region; Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, etc), thus giving it the meaning Land of the Pure.
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| [edit]
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| Independence
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| The neutrality of this section is disputed. Please view the article's talk page.
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| The Minar-e-Pakistan in Lahore commemorates the Pakistan ResolutionFrom August 14, 1947, until 1971, the nation consisted of West Pakistan and East Pakistan.East Pakistan seceded from Pakistan after the Civil War of 1971, becoming the nation of Bangladesh.
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| Since independence, Pakistan has also been in constant dispute with India over the territory of Kashmir. The Kashmir dispute has complicated relations between Pakistan and India.
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| Pakistani political history is divided into alternating periods of military dictatorship and democratic civilian/parliamentary rule. Although dominion status was ended in 1956 with the formation of a Constitution and a declaration of Pakistan as an Islamic Republic, the military took control in 1958 and held power for more than 10 years. Civilian rule returned after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, but was interrupted in the late 1970s, with the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was convicted of murdering a political opponent in a controversial split decision by Pakistan's Supreme Court and replaced by General Zia ul-Haq
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| Front-line state in the anti-Soviet Afghan war
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| During the 1980s, Pakistan received substantial aid from the United States and took in millions of Afghan (mostly Pashtun) refugees fleeing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The influx of so many refugees - the largest refugee population in the world - has had a heavy impact on Pakistan. The dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq also saw an expansion of Islamic law, as well as an influx of weaponry and drugs from Afghanistan. In 1988, the general died in an aircraft crash and Pakistan returned to an elected government, ushered in with the election of Benazir Bhutto.
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| Civilian Democracy
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| From 1988 to 1998, Pakistan was ruled by civilian governments, alternately headed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who were each elected twice and removed from office on charges of corruption. Economic growth declined towards the end of this period, hurt by the Asian financial crisis, and economic sanctions imposed on Pakistan after its first tests of nuclear devices in 1998. The Pakistani testing came shortly after India tested nuclear devices and increased fears of a nuclear arms race in South Asia. The next year, the Kargil Conflict in Kashmir threatened to escalate to a full-scale war.
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| In the election that returned Nawaz Sharif as Prime Minister in 1997, his party received a heavy majority of the vote, obtaining enough seats in parliament to change the constitution, which Sharif amended to eliminate the formal checks and balances that restrained the Prime Minister's power. Institutional challenges to his authority, led by the civilian President Farooq Leghari, military chief Jehangir Karamat and Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah were put down and all three were forced to resign - the Chief Justice did so after the Supreme Court was stormed by Sharif partisans. General Musharraf overthrew the civilian govt. in a military coup.
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| Recent history
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| On May 12, 2000 the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered Musharraf to hold general elections by October 12, 2002. In an attempt to legitimize his presidency and assure its continuance after the impending elections, he held a national referendum on April 30, 2002, which extended his presidential term to a period ending five years after the October elections. However, the referendum was boycotted by the majority of Pakistani political groupings, and voter turnout was 30% or below by most estimates.
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| General elections were held in October 2002 and a pro-Musharraf party, the PML-Q, won a plurality of the seats in the Parliament. However, parties opposed to Musharraf effectively paralyzed the National Assembly for over a year, until, in accordance with a deal with the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal party, Musharraf agreed to leave the army on December 31, 2004. With that party's support, pro-Musharraf legislators were able to muster the two-thirds supermajority required to pass the Seventeenth Amendment, which retroactively legalized Musharraf's 1999 coup and many of his subsequent decrees. In a vote of confidence on January 1, 2004, Musharraf won 658 out of 1,170 votes in the Electoral College of Pakistan, and according to Article 41(8) of the Constitution of Pakistan, was "deemed to be elected" to the office of President. On September 15, 2004, Musharraf backed down from his commitment to step down as Army chief, citing circumstances of national necessity that he felt required him to keep both offices.
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| While economic reforms undertaken during his regime have yielded some results, social reform programmes appear to have met with resistance. Musharraf's power is threatened by extremists who have grown in strength since the September 11, 2001 attacks and who are particularly angered by Musharraf's close political and military alliance with the United States. Musharraf has survived assassination attempts by terrorist groups believed to be part of Al-Qaeda, including at least two instances where the terrorists had inside information from a member of his military security detail.
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| [edit] | |
| Politics
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| Main article: Politics of Pakistan
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| [edit]
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| Political Parties
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| Pakistan's two largest mainstream parties are the Pakistan Peoples Party and the Pakistan Muslim League (Q) (supported by the military establishment of Pakistan), which obtained a plurality in the October 2002 elections. In those elections, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), a coalition of six religious muslim parties, emerged as the third largest party, with 11% of the popular vote. In one province, NWFP, it obtained 48 out of 96 Provincial Assembly seats. It formed a government in that province and in the Balochistan, in coalition with other parties.
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| [edit]
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| Form of Government
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| Officially a federal republic, Pakistan has had a long history of alternating periods of electoral democracy and authoritarian military government. Military presidents include General Ayub Khan in the 1960s, General Zia ul Haq in the 1980s, and General Pervez Musharraf from 1999. However, a majority of Pakistan's Heads of State and Heads of Government have been elected civilian leaders. General elections were held in October 2002. After monitoring the elections, the Commonwealth Observer Group stated in its report, "We believe that on election day this was a credible election: the will of the people was expressed and the results reflected their wishes." [2] (http://www.thecommonwealth.org/shared_asp_files/uploadedfiles/%7BB8E19A5C-0810-4AAF-AD3A-F0AFCEE0E814%7D_Pakistan%202002.pdf) On May 22, 2004, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group re-admitted Pakistan into the Commonwealth, formally acknowledging its progress in returning to democracy.
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| [edit]
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| Recent Political History
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| In October 1999, General Pervez Musharraf overthrew the civilian government after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif allegedly hijacked the commercial airliner on which Musharraf was travelling, and attempted to thwart its landing at Karachi. Musharraf assumed executive authority. Local government elections were held in 2000. Musharraf declared himself president in 2001. An April 2002 national referendum approved Musharraf's role as president but the vote was tainted by allegations of rigging and the opposition stridently questioned the legitimacy of Musharraf's presidency until his electoral college victory in January 2004.
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| Nation-wide parliamentary elections were held in 2002 with Zafarullah Khan Jamali of the Pakistan Muslim League party emerging as Prime Minister. After over a year of political wrangling in the bicameral legislature, Musharraf struck a compromise with some of his parliamentary opponents, giving his supporters the two-thirds majority vote required to amend the constitution in December 2003, retroactively legalizing his 1999 coup and permitting him to remain president if he met certain conditions. A parliamentary electoral college - consisting of the National Assembly and Senate and the provincial assemblies - gave Musharraf a vote of confidence[3] (http://www.dawn.com/2004/01/02/top1.htm) on January 1, 2004, thereby legitimizing his presidency until 2007.
| | There are also several regional and local festivals, such as the Punjabi festival of Basant, which marks the start of spring and is celebrated by kite flying. |
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| Prime Minister Jamali resigned on June 26, 2004. PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain became interim PM, and was succeeded by Finance minister and former Citibank Vice President Shaukat Aziz, who became Prime Minister on August 28, 2004.
| | ==See also== |
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| Shaukat Aziz was elected from Attock
| | {{wikipedia}} |
| | * [[Nankana Sahib]] |
| | * [[Pakistan]] |
| | * [[Gurdwaras in Pakistan]] |
| | * [[Harcharan Singh]] Twenty one year old Harcharan Singh has become Pakistan's first Sikh army officer |
| | * [[Sikhism in Pakistan]] |
| | * [[First Sikh officer in Pakistan Army]] |
| | * [[Sikh Pilgrimage to Pakistan]] |
| | * [[Gurudwaras In Pakistan (Pictorial View)]] |
| | * [[Pakistan - Birth and objectives]] |
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| [edit]
| | {{Pakistan}} |
| Subdivisions
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| Main article: Subdivisions of Pakistan, Districts of Pakistan
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| Pakistan has 4 provinces, 2 territories, and also administers parts of Kashmir. The provinces are further subdivided into a total of 105 districts. Provinces: | | ==External links== |
| | * [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/country_profiles/1156716.stm bbc.co.uk] Pakistan Timeline: A chronology of key events: |
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| Balochistan
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| North-West Frontier Province
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| Punjab
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| Sindh
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| Territories:
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| Islamabad Capital Territory
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| Federally Administered Tribal Areas
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| Two provinces, NWFP and Balochistan, also have PATA (Provincially Administered Tribal Areas.) It is expected that these will be developed into regular districts.
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| Pakistani-administered portions of Jammu and Kashmir region:
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| Azad Kashmir (Azad means "free" or "independent" in Urdu)
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| Northern Areas
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| ==See Also==
| | [[Category:Geography]] |
| * [[Gurudwaras of Pakistan]]
| | [[Category:Places]] |
