Asian Art

History of Pakistan (1947–present)

The History of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan began on 14 August 1947 when the country came into being in the form of the Dominion of Pakistan within the British Commonwealth as the result of the Pakistan Movement and the partition of India. While the history of the Pakistani nation according to the Pakistan government's official chronology started with the Islamic rule over Indian subcontinent by Muhammad ibn al-Qasim which reached its zenith during Mughal era. In 1947, Pakistan consisted of West Pakistan (today's Pakistan) and East Pakistan (today's Bangladesh). The President of All-India Muslim League and later the Pakistan Muslim League, Muhammad Ali Jinnah became Governor-General while the secretary general of the Muslim League, Liaquat Ali Khan became Prime Minister. The constitution of 1956 made Pakistan an Islamic democratic country. Pakistan faced a civil war and Indian military intervention in 1971 resulting in the secession of East Pakistan as the new country of Bangladesh. The country has also unresolved territorial disputes with India, resulting in four conflicts. Pakistan was closely tied to the United States in the Cold War. In the Afghan–Soviet War, it supported the Afghan mujahideen and played a vital role in the defeat of Soviet Forces and forced them to withdraw from Afghanistan. The country continues to face challenging problems including terrorism, poverty, illiteracy, corruption and political instability. Terrorism due to war on terror damaged the country's economy and infrastructure to a great extent from 2001 to 2009 but Pakistan is once again developing. Pakistan is a nuclear power as well as a declared nuclear-weapon state, having conducted six nuclear tests in response to five nuclear tests of their rival Republic of India in May 1998. The first five tests were conducted on 28 May and the sixth one on 30 May. With this status, Pakistan is seventh in world, second in South Asia and the only country in the Islamic World. Pakistan also has the sixth-largest standing armed forces in the world and is spending a major amount of its budget on defense.

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See also

• ▸Cartography of China
• ▸CBSCR Baldwin saddle tank
• ▸History of Taiwan

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.