Pakistan is a country found at the crossroads between Central Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. Pakistan has a 1046 kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Iran to the southwest, Afghanistan to the west and north, China to the northeast and India to the east. It is separated from Tajikistan by the narrow Wakhan Corridor in the north, and a
lso shares a marine border with Oman. Although the country is relatively new, the Indus region which Pakistan now covers was previously home to several ancient cultures, including the Mehrgarh of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilisation, and was later home to kingdoms ruled by people of different faiths and cultures, including the Indo-Greeks, Muslims, Turco-Mongols and Pashtons. Parts of the country were also once ruled by numerous empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenid Empire, Empire of Alexander of Macedonia, the Arab Umayyad Caliphate, the Mongol Empire, the Mughal Empire and the British Empire. Pakistan gained its independence from British rule on 14 August 1947. Pakistan is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of four provinces, one autonomous province and three territories. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similar variation in its geography and wildlife. A regional and middle power, Pakistan has the fourth largest standing armed forces in the world and is also a nuclear power as well as a declared nuclear-weapons state, being the only nation in the Muslim world to have that status. It has a semi-industrialised economy with a well-integrated agriculture sector, its economy is the 26th largest in the world in terms of purchasing power and 45th largest in terms of nominal GDP and is also characterised among the emerging and growth-leading economies of the world. The post-independence history of Pakistan has been characterised by periods of military rule, political instability and conflicts with neighbouring India. The country continues to face challenging problems like terrorism and corruption but regardless still ranks among the countries with the most income equality and ranked 16th on the Happy Planet Index. It is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Next Eleven Economies, ECO, UfC, D8, Cairns Group, Kyoto Protocol, ICCPR, RCD, UNCHR, Group of Eleven, CPFTA, Group of 24, the G20 developing nations, ECOSOC, founding member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation), and CERN. CAPITAL
اسلام آباد Islamabad
