Pakistan

• 1. Introduction

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  Pakistan takes its name from an acronym a student activist coined in a pamphlet. In January 1933, Choudhry Rahmat Ali published the word, first spelling it "Pakstan," in a pamphlet titled Now or Never. He explained it as letters drawn from the names of homelands: Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. He added that Pakistan means the land of the Paks, the spiritually pure and clean. Today that name belongs to the fifth-most populous country on Earth, home to over 241.5 million people. It holds the second-largest Muslim population, a declared nuclear arsenal, and the world's seventh-largest standing armed forces. Yet Pakistan was the only country ever established in the name of Islam. How did an acronym become a homeland? Why did one of its two halves break away after just twenty-four years? And what does it mean to build a state on a ceasefire line that no one has agreed to make permanent? The answers begin in a valley where the oldest stone tools in the region were found, dating back roughly two million years.

• 2. Layers Of Empire

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  The Soan Valley of northern Pakistan held the earliest known stone tools in the region, made during the Lower Palaeolithic. From there the Indus plain became home to wave after wave of civilisation. The Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan dates back 8,500 years. The Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age built urban centres at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, anchoring a 5,000-year history of city life in South Asia.

  In 326 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered the region, defeating local rulers including King Porus at Jhelum. The Mauryas ruled from 322 to 185 BCE, and under Ashoka the Great the empire expanded. The Indo-Greek Kingdom, founded by Demetrius of Bactria, reached its greatest extent under Menander between 165 and 150 BCE, nurturing a Greco-Buddhist culture. At Taxila stood one of the earliest universities in the world, established during the late Vedic period in the 6th century BCE, later recorded by Chinese pilgrims.

  Makran came under Muslim rule in the 7th century, conquered under Mu'awiya I. In 711, the Arab general Muhammad ibn Qasim took Sindh and parts of Punjab, a moment Pakistan's official chronology treats as the laying of its foundation. Sufi missionaries converted much of the population to Islam. The Mughal Empire ruled from 1526 to 1857, introducing Persian literature and building monuments at Multan, Lahore, Peshawar, and Thatta. By the 18th century the Mughals were disintegrating, hastened by invasions from Nader Shah of Iran in 1739 and the Durrani Empire of Afghanistan in 1748.

• 3. The Two-Nation Idea

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  Karachi was a small fishing village with a mud fort when the British took it in 1839, using it as a port and military base for the First Afghan War. The remainder of Sindh followed in 1843, settled by the Battle of Miani. Through the Anglo-Sikh Wars and the Anglo-Afghan Wars, the British absorbed the region. By 1893, all of modern Pakistan belonged to the British Indian Empire, ruled directly by Queen Victoria after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 to 1858.

  Sir Syed Ahmed Khan led a Muslim intellectual movement that advocated the two-nation theory and helped establish the All-India Muslim League in 1906. In March 1929, Muhammad Ali Jinnah issued his fourteen points to safeguard the Muslim minority in a united India. They were rejected. In his address of the 29th of December 1930, Allama Iqbal called for the amalgamation of Muslim-majority states in North-West India. This thinking led to the Lahore Resolution of 1940, presented by A.K. Fazlul Haque and known as the Pakistan Resolution.

  By 1942, Britain was strained by World War II, with India threatened by Japanese forces. Britain pledged voluntary independence in exchange for wartime support, with a clause stating no part of British India would be forced to join the resulting dominion. While Mahatma Gandhi's Congress launched the Quit India Movement, the Muslim League chose to back the war effort, nurturing the possibility of a Muslim nation.

• 4. Partition And Its Wounds

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  The 1946 elections saw the Muslim League secure 90 percent of the Muslim seats, forcing the Indian National Congress to acknowledge its standing. After discussions involving Viceroy Lord Mountbatten of Burma, Jinnah, and Jawaharlal Nehru, the formal declaration to partition British India was issued on the evening of the 3rd of June 1947. At 7:00 P.M., All India Radio broadcast the announcement, with speeches from Nehru and Jinnah, who closed with the slogan Pakistan Zindabad, Long Live Pakistan.

  The modern state of Pakistan was established on the 14th of August 1947, joining the Muslim-majority eastern and northwestern regions of British India. In the riots that swept Punjab Province, between 200,000 and 2,000,000 people were killed in what some have called a retributive genocide between religions. Around 50,000 Muslim women were abducted and raped by Hindu and Sikh men, while 33,000 Hindu and Sikh women suffered the same at the hands of Muslims.

  Around 6.5 million Muslims moved from India to West Pakistan, and 4.7 million Hindus and Sikhs moved the other way. It was the largest mass migration in human history. A dispute over the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir soon sparked the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 to 1948. Jinnah became Pakistan's first Governor-General, but he died of tuberculosis on the 11th of September 1948.

• 5. Faith As Foundation

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  Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, who held the position of Shaykh al-Islam in Pakistan in 1949, described Jinnah upon his death as the greatest Muslim after Aurangzeb. The efforts of Jamaat-i-Islami and the ulama, including Maulana Mawdudi's insistence on the supreme sovereignty of God, led to the passage of the Objectives Resolution in March 1949. Liaquat Ali Khan called it the second most significant step in Pakistan's history.

  Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, a Muslim League leader, argued that Pakistan could only truly become an Islamic state after uniting all believers of Islam into a single political unit. Pakistan's desire for a united Islamic bloc, called Islamistan, drew figures like the Grand Mufti of Palestine, Al-Haj Amin al-Husseini, yet won no support from other Muslim governments. That ambition for an international body of Muslim countries was finally met in the 1970s with the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

  The 1973 Constitution declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic with Islam as the state religion. It mandated that laws comply with the Quran and Sunnah and established the Shariat Court and the Council of Islamic Ideology. General Zia-ul-Haq, after seizing power, committed to enforcing sharia law and aligned with Deobandi institutions, deepening sectarian tensions through anti-Shia policies. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 94 percent of Pakistanis identify more with religion than nationality.

• 6. Generals And Ballots

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  President Iskander Mirza imposed martial law, and was succeeded by General Ayub Khan, who suspended the 1956 constitution in 1958. After adopting a presidential system in 1962, Pakistan grew until the second war with India in 1965 brought economic downturn. In 1969, President Yahya Khan faced a cyclone in East Pakistan that killed 500,000 people.

  In 1970, Pakistan held its first democratic elections since independence. When the East Pakistani Awami League defeated the Pakistan Peoples Party, Yahya Khan and the military refused to transfer power. This led to Operation Searchlight and a war of liberation by the Bengali Mukti Bahini. Independent researchers estimate that between 300,000 and 500,000 civilians died, while the Bangladesh government's figure of three million is now widely regarded as inflated. In 1971, a conventional war ended in Indian victory and East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

  Zulfikar Ali Bhutto took over and worked toward the constitution. From 1977 to 1988, President Zia-ul-Haq oversaw economic Islamisation that made Pakistan one of the fastest-growing economies in South Asia, while the North-West Frontier Province became a base for anti-Soviet Afghan fighters. Zia died in a plane crash in 1988, and Benazir Bhutto, daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, became the country's first female Prime Minister. In April 2022, Shehbaz Sharif was elected prime minister after Imran Khan, the 22nd Prime Minister, lost a no-confidence vote.

• 7. Mountains And The Bomb

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  K2 rises to 8,611 metres, one of five eight-thousanders that stand within Pakistan's northern highlands, alongside Nanga Parbat at 8,126 metres. The country covers 881,913 square kilometres, ranking 33rd-largest by area, though that figure shifts with Kashmir's disputed status. The 1,609-kilometre Indus River runs from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea, sustaining the alluvial plains of Punjab and Sindh. Pakistan sits where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide, making its north prone to powerful earthquakes.

  In 1972, Pakistan embarked on a plan to develop nuclear deterrence, inaugurating its first nuclear power plant that same year. India's first nuclear test in 1974 gave Pakistan further justification to accelerate. After India's tests in May 1998, Nawaz Sharif authorised Pakistan's own, making it the seventh country to possess nuclear weapons. Pakistan maintains a policy of Full spectrum deterrence, with control vested in the National Command Authority.

  Abdul Qadeer Khan led Pakistan's uranium enrichment program, establishing the Kahuta Research Laboratories in 1976 and serving as Director-General until 2001. By its own calculations, Pakistan's involvement in the war on terrorism has cost up to $118 billion, over eighty-one thousand casualties, and more than 1.8 million displaced civilians. Pakistan remains a non-signatory of the Treaty on Nuclear Non-Proliferation, and in September 2025 it signed a Strategic Mutual Defence Agreement with Saudi Arabia that extends its nuclear umbrella to that country.

• 8. Resources And Strains

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  The Reko Diq Mine holds one of the world's largest undeveloped copper deposits, estimated at 15 million tonnes in reserves. A feasibility study projects roughly 17.9 million ounces of gold over a 37-year mine life, with total copper and gold reserves valued at over $60 billion. Pakistan's coal reserves have been estimated as the fifth largest in the world, equivalent to about 400 billion barrels of oil, exceeding the combined oil reserves of Saudi Arabia and Iran. In 2016, one observer wrote in Forbes that Pakistan could be the Saudi Arabia of Coal.

  Pakistan's economy ranks 27th globally by purchasing power parity, with GDP (PPP) of $1.8 trillion in 2026. Yet around 44.7 percent of the population lives below the international poverty line of $4.20 a day, and 16.5 percent live in extreme poverty. A diaspora of around 10 million sent $38.3 billion in remittances in fiscal year 2024 to 2025. Pakistan produced 28.98 million metric tons of wheat in 2025 to 2026, ranking seventh globally, and is the fourth-largest milk producer.

  India controls about 45.1 percent of Kashmir, while Pakistan controls roughly 38.2 percent and China holds about 20 percent. The United Nations brokered a ceasefire in 1949 and established the Line of Control as a de facto border. India did not hold the promised plebiscite. Pakistani theoretical physicist Abdus Salam won a Nobel Prize for his work on the electroweak interaction, a reminder that this contested land has also sent a son to the highest table in science.