Wikipedia:Today's featured article/May 29, 2006

Pakistan is a country located in South Asia that overlaps with the Greater Middle East. It has a thousand-kilometre coastline along the Arabian Sea in the south and borders Afghanistan and Iran to the west, India to the east and the People's Republic of China in the far northeast. The name Pakistan means "Land of the Pure" in Urdu and Persian and was coined in 1933 by Choudhary Rahmat Ali, who published it in the pamphlet Now or Never. Pakistan is the sixth-most populous country in the world and the second-most populous Muslim country. Pakistan was established as a modern state in 1947, but the region has a long history of settlement, including by the Indus Valley Civilization. The region was invaded by Afghans, Greeks, Persians, Arabs, and was incorporated into British Raj in the 19th century. Since independence, Pakistan has seen both instability, with the loss of East Pakistan, and significant military and economic growth. Pakistan has the seventh-largest armed forces in the world and is a declared nuclear weapons state. (more...)