Pakistan

Pakistan is a country in Southwest Asia that, under British colonial rule, was part of India. Amidst fears of persecution of India's Muslim minority following independence, Great Britain partitioned India and created the separate state of Pakistan as a Muslim country. Upwards of a million people died in civil unrest during population transfers following partition, and tensions between India and Pakistan have remained high throughout the post-colonial era: in fact, both countries developed nuclear weapons in 1974, for the sole purpose of deterring the other from attacking them!

Pakistan was originally comprised of two territories - East Pakistan and West Pakistan. In 1971, following another bloody confrontation (do we see a pattern emerging here?), East Pakistan seceded and was renamed Bangladesh.

The word "Pakistan" is derived from the initials of the three regions the state borders - Punjab, Afghanistan, and Kashmir. "Pak" means "pure" in Urdu; thus, Pakistan is "the land of the pure."

As if the threat of all-out nuclear war with India weren't enough, Pakistan also has the Taliban and Al Qaeda to worry about. The entire northwestern state of Pakistan - aptly named the North-West Frontier Province - is filled with terrorists.

Pakistan is officially a Republic, is recognized as a dictatorship by many nations, and is a police state in reality. They currently are ruled by their malevolent benevolent dictator fearless leader named Pervez Musharraf, whose first name surrenders a cornucopia of potentially humorous misspellings. A lot of smart people think that Pakistan actually has a chance at democracy, but many of them are assassinated.

Pakistan is currently threatened with Taliban/Al Qaeda aligned groups who are largely of its own making. Pakistan was encouraged by the US and Britain's MI6 to promote the war against the Soviet backed Afghanistan the 1980s, using the Islamic Militants as proxies. These gangs included Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda and were organised under the Benazir Bhutto government. The CIA was later placed in the position of having to buy back "Stinger" ground to air missiles it had supplied to its erstwhile allies for fear that they would be used used against civil airliners.

The Islamic fundamentalists have challenged the principle that Pakistan can be both secular and Islamic. They have little popular support outside the tribal areas of NWFP, which is mediated through tribal warlords, but are able to achieve a disproportionate effect by their ruthless campaign of bombing and murder.

Other stuff worth reading

• Pervez Musharraf
• Benazir Bhutto
• Nawaz Sharif
• North-West Frontier Province
• Corruption in the Pakistani Government. (Note: Political and administrative corruption is prevalent in almost all countries, and Pakistan is no exception. It will be not right to guess that Pakistan is the only nation with government corruption in the world.)