Pakistan

**Pakistan**, officially the **Islamic Republic of Pakistan** was a nation in South Asia. It shared land borders with India, China, Iran and Afghanistan. It also shared a maritime border with Oman.

## History

### Independence

After independence from the partition of India in 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the President of Muslim League, became nation's first Governor-General as well as first President-Speaker of the Parliament. Meanwhile, Pakistan's founding fathers agreed upon appointing Liaquat Ali Khan, the secretary-general of the party, nation's first Prime Minister. A dominion status in the Commonwealth of Nations, Pakistan was under two British monarch when George VI relinquished the title of Emperor of India to become King of Pakistan in 1947. After George VI's death on 6 February 1952, Elizabeth II became the Queen of Pakistan who retained the title until Pakistan becoming the Islamic republic in 1956, but democracy was stalled by the martial law enforced by President Iskander Mirza who was replaced by army chief, General Ayub Khan. Forming presidential system in 1962, the country experienced exceptional growth until a second war with India in 1965 which led to economic downfall and wide-scale public disapproval in 1967. Consolidating the control from Ayub Khan in 1969, President Yahya Khan had to deal with a devastating cyclone which caused 500,000 deaths in East Pakistan.

In 1970, Pakistan held its first democratic elections since independence, that were meant to mark a transition from military rule to democracy, but after the East Pakistani Awami League won against Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP); Yahya Khan and military establishment refused to hand over power. Instigated civil unrest invited the military launched an operation on 25 March 1971, aiming to regain control of the province. The genocide carried out during this operation led to a declaration of independence and to the waging of a war of liberation by the Bengali Mukti Bahini forces in East Pakistan, with support from India. Preemptive strikes on India by the Pakistan's air force, navy, and marines sparked the conventional war in 1971, which witnessed the Indian victory and East Pakistan gaining independence as Bangladesh.

With Pakistan surrendering in the war, Yahya Khan was replaced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as President; the country worked towards promulgating constitution and putting the country on roads of democracy. Democratic rule resumed from 1972 to 1977– an era of self-consciousness, intellectual leftism, nationalism, and nationwide reconstruction. During this period, Pakistan embarked on ambitiously developing the nuclear deterrence in 1972 in a view to prevent any foreign invasion; the country's first nuclear power plant was inaugurated, also the same year.

Democracy ended with a military coup in 1977 against the leftist PPP, which saw General Zia-ul-Haq become the president in 1978. From 1977–88, President Zia's corporatisation and economic Islamisation initiatives led to Pakistan becoming one of the fastest-growing economies in South Asia. While consolidating the nuclear development, increasing Islamization, and the rise of homegrown conservative philosophy, Pakistan helped subsidize and distribute U.S. resources to factions of the mujahideen against the USSR's intervention in communist Afghanistan. President Zia died in a plane crash in 1988, and Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was elected as the country's first female Prime Minister. The Pakistan Peoples Party followed by conservative Pakistan Muslim League (N), and over the next decade whose two leaders fought for power, alternating in office while the country's situation worsened; economic indicators fell sharply, in contrast to the 1980s. Military tension Pakistan and India the Kargil district led to the Kargil War of 1999, and a turbulence in civic-military relations allowed General Pervez Musharraf took over through a bloodless coup d'état.

### War with the Taliban

*See Full Article: War in Pakistan*

The Taliban gained a foothold in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan after NATO drive them from power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2001. However, formal insurgency did not begin until 2004, prominently in Waziristan. The Taliban gradually destabilized Pakistan. In 2016, the Islamic State also infiltrated Afghanistan and Pakistan and gained the allegiance of the most extreme Taliban commanders further destabilizing Pakistan. Irregular flooding of he Indus River inundated a fifth of Pakistan in August 2017 displacing 25 million people and increasing the momentum of the joint offensive by the Taliban and the Islamic State in Pakistan. In September 2017 the United States launched Operation Icarus to destroy Pakistan's nuclear weapons before the Taliban or IS could capture any of them. Faced with the loss of de facto control over much of its territory and the threat of becoming a failed state, Pakistan sought annexation into the newly formed United Islamic Republic in August 2018, ceasing to exist as an independent nation after 61 years of independence.

The UIR divided Pakistan into the Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan and Pashtun regions. Former Pakistani Baluchistan joined the Baluchistan Regional Government which also included Iran's Sistan and Baluchistan Province and former Afghanistan's East Sistan region. The Northwest Frontier Province of former Pakistan joined the Pashtun dominated provinces of former southern Afghanistan in the Pashtun Regional Government. The UIR united the whole of Baluchistan and the whole of the Pashtun territories for the first time.

### Persification

The UIR acquired the surviving military assets of former Pakistan giving a boost to its nuclear weapons and missile programs. The UIR divided former Pakistan into its four principle ethnic regions but encouraged Farsi as a language of business, higher education, government and interethnic communication in place of Urdu or English. Tehran also encouraged populations to identify as Shia leading to over 30% of the population of former Pakistan to identify as Shia by 2030 and over half by mid century. Although nominally part of a "Greater Iran," and increasingly Persified, former Pakistan contained nearly half the population of the entire United Islamic Republic. There were almost as many Punjabis as Persians and Karachi and Lahore were the largest and third largest cities respectively in the UIR. The various peoples of former Pakistan contributed to a fusion of cultures in the UIR and its biggest cities such as Tehran and Karachi where millions migrated in search of work.

## Government and Politics

Pakistan was a democratic parliamentary federal republic with Islam as the state religion. The President was the Head of State was elected by an Electoral College and was the ceremonial head of the state and the civilian commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Armed Forces. The bicameral legislature comprised of a 100-member Senate (upper house) and a 342-member National Assembly (lower house). Members of the National Assembly were elected through the first-past-the-post system under universal adult suffrage, representing electoral districts known as National Assembly constituencies. The Prime Minister was usually the leader of the majority rule party or a coalition in the National Assembly— the lower house. The Prime Minister served as the head of government and was designated to exercise as the country's chief executive.

### Administrative Divisions

Pakistan was a federation that comprised four provinces and four territories. The provinces were:

* Punjab
* Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
* Sindh
* Balochistan

The territories were:

* The Tribal belt
* Gilgit–Baltistan
* Islamabad Capital Territory
* Kashmir

### Foreign Relations

Pakistan was an influential and founding member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and was a Major Non-NATO Ally of the United States in the war against terrorism — a status achieved in 2004. That status was revoked by Hillary Clinton before Operation Icarus. Pakistan was also a member of Commonwealth of Nations, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Economic Cooperation Organisation (ECO) and the G20 developing nations. Pakistan also maintained close military and economic relations with China to counter the threat of their rival India. Saudi Arabia was also a key ally of Pakistan. Relations with the US were often strained due to US drone strikes in Northwestern Pakistan, and especially strained after the killing of Osama bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad.