About Pakistan

Pakistan 

 Pakistan (Urdu: پاکِستان),officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (اِسلامی روبـورک پاکِستان), is a country in South Asia. It is the fifth most populous country in the world with nearly 243 million inhabitants and has the second largest Muslim population in the world after Indonesia. Pakistan is the 33rd largest country in the world by area and the 2nd largest in South Asia, with an area of ​​881,913 square kilometers (340,509 sq mi). It has 1,046 kilometers (650 mi) of coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman to the south, and is bordered by India to the east, Afghanistan to the west, Iran to the southwest, and China to the northeast. It is closely separated from Tajikistan by Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor in the north and also shares a maritime border with Oman. Islamabad is the country's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial center.

Pakistan is home to several ancient cultures, including the 8,500-year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Baluchistan, the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization, the most extensive civilization in Afro-Eurasia and the ancient Gandhara civilization. The area that includes the modern state of Pakistan was the realm of several empires and dynasties, including the Achaemenids; briefly that of Alexander the Great; Seleucids, Mauryas, Kushans, Guptas;Umayyad Caliphate in its southern regions, Hindu Shahis, Ghaznavids, Delhi Sultanate, Mughals, Durrans, Sikh Empire, British East India Company ruled and most recently British Indian Empire from 1858 to 1947.

Spurred on by the Pakistan Movement, which sought a homeland for Muslims from British India, and the 1946 electoral victories of the All India Muslim League, Pakistan gained independence in 1947 after the partition of the British Indian Empire, which granted independent statehood to its Muslim-majority regions and was accompanied by an unprecedented mass migration and loss of life.Initially a British Commonwealth Dominion, Pakistan officially drafted its constitution in 1956 and became a self-declared Islamic republic. In 1971, the exclave of East Pakistan seceded as the new country of Bangladesh after a nine-month civil war. For the next four decades, Pakistan was ruled by governments whose descriptions, while complex, routinely alternated between civilian and military, democratic and authoritarian, relatively secular and Islamist. Pakistan elected a civilian government in 2008 and adopted a parliamentary system with periodic elections in 2010.

Pakistan is a middle power nation as the sixth largest standing armed forces in the world. It is a declared nuclear weapons state and is ranked among developing and growth economies  with a large and rapidly growing middle class.Pakistan's political history since independence has been characterized by periods of significant economic and military growth as well as periods of political and economic instability. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with a similarly diverse geography and wildlife. The country continues to face challenges, including poverty, illiteracy, corruption and terrorism.Pakistan is a member of the United Nations, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Organization 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.