It is the fifth-most populous country , with a population of over Islamabad is the nation's capital, while Karachi is its largest city and financial centre. Pakistan is the 33rd-largest country by area. Bounded by the Arabian Sea on the south, the Gulf of Oman on the southwest, and the Sir Creek on the southeast, it shares land borders with India to the east ; Afghanistan to the west ; Iran to the southwest ; and China to the northeast.
It shares a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman, and is separated from Tajikistan in the northwest by Afghanistan's narrow Wakhan Corridor. Pakistan is the site of several ancient cultures , including the 8,year-old Neolithic site of Mehrgarh in Balochistan , the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Bronze Age , [ 10 ] and the ancient Gandhara civilisation. Spurred by the Pakistan Movement , which sought a homeland for the Muslims of British India , and election victories in by the All-India Muslim League , Pakistan gained independence in after the Partition of the British Indian Empire , which awarded separate statehood to its Muslim-majority regions and was accompanied by an unparalleled mass migration and loss of life.
In , the exclave of East Pakistan seceded as the new country of Bangladesh after a nine-month-long civil war. In the following four decades, Pakistan has been ruled by governments whose descriptions, although complex, commonly alternated between civilian and military, democratic and authoritarian, relatively secular and Islamist.
Pakistan is considered a middle power nation, [ 17 ] [ h ] with the world's sixth-largest standing armed forces. It is a declared nuclear-weapons state , and is ranked amongst the emerging and growth-leading economies, [ 18 ] with a large and rapidly growing middle class. It is an ethnically and linguistically diverse country, with similarly diverse geography and wildlife. The country continues to face challenges, including poverty , illiteracy , corruption , and terrorism.
The name Pakistan was coined by Choudhry Rahmat Ali , a Pakistan Movement activist, who in January first published it originally as "Pakstan" in a pamphlet Now or Never , using it as an acronym. It means the land of the Paks, the spiritually pure and clean. Rahmat Ali's concept of Pakistan only related to the northwestern area of the Indian subcontinent. He also proposed the name "Banglastan" for the Muslim areas of Bengal and "Osmanistan" for Hyderabad State , as well as a political federation between the three.
