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Pakistan officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (Urdu: اسلامی جمہوریۂ
پاکستان), is a country located in South Asia that overlaps with the Greater
Middle East. It has a thousand-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea in the
south and borders Afghanistan and Iran to the west, India to the east and the
People's Republic of China in 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 for Punjab, A for Afghania (the Afghan areas), K for Kashmir,
S for Sindh and tan for Balochistan. I was later added to the English
rendition of the name to ease pronunciation.
Pakistan is the sixth most populour country in the world and the second most
populous Muslim country, after Indonesia. It was established as a modern state
in 1947, as one of the two parts of the partitioned British India, but the
region has a long history of settlement and civilisation including the Indus
Valley Civilisation. The region was invaded by Afghans, Greeks, Persians, Arabs,
and was incorporated into British Raj in the nineteenth century. Since
independence, Pakistan has experienced both times of significant growth, both
military and economic, and times of instability, with the loss of East Pakistan
(present-day Bangladesh). Pakistan has the seventh largest armed forces in the
world and is a declared nuclear weapons state.
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