Holiday in Pakistan (1): introduction
I am about to go on a holiday to Pakistan with the company Voyages Jules Verne. This will the 89th country that I have visited. The country is huge and we will only be visiting the north which is the most interesting part and contains the capital Islamabad (the south is more commercial and contains the largest city Karachi).
I have my visa and I’ve had my typhoid injection, so I’m good to go. I will be away for two and a half weeks. There will be four long haul flights: two there and two back. We will stay in eight locations and make two internal flights. So there will be a lot of travelling.
Most of my friends wonder why I would want to visit a country like Pakistan. Certainly, economically and politically, the nation is a disaster. But historically, culturally and geographically, it is fascinating and that’s why we’re going there.
Let me provide a short introduction to the country.
The name Pakistan comes from two Urdu words: pah meaning ‘pure’ and stan meaning ‘land’. But the name is also an acronym: the P is for Punjab, A is for Afghania, K is for Kashmir, S in for Sindh, and T stands for ‘tan’ as in Baluchistan.
The modern state of Pakistan was created in 1947 when the predominately Muslim population broke away from the majority Hindu nation of India. Then Pakistan consisted of two regions over a thousand miles apart but, in 1971, what used to be East Pakistan broke away to become Bangladesh, leaving West Pakistan to become simply Pakistan.
Pakistan is now the fifth most populous country in the world with a rapidly growing population of some 245 million. The only nations with a larger population are India, China, the United States and Indonesia. Crucially, Pakistan is a young country: about 65% of the population is under the age of 30.
Pakistan currently has the second largest Muslim population of any country – second only to Indonesia – but it is projected to have the most Muslims by 2030. Some 80% of the country’s Muslims are Sunni, while the other 20% are Shia.
The national language is Urdu but English is widely spoken. Each ethnic group has its own language, so the Punjabis – who constitute around half of population – speak Punjabi, while the Sindhis – the second largest ethnic group – speak Sindhi and there are 77 languages in all.
The economy is in a desperate state. Currently, inflation is running at around 30% and interest rates are 22%. Since independence, the country has had no fewer than 23 bail out packages from the IMF. Economically Pakistan is a very unequal society. Although it has a middle class of some 40 million which is growing quickly, a fifth of of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.
The country faces so many major challenges, including poverty, illiteracy, corruption, terrorism and the impact of climate change (recent floods devastated a third of the country). This is a nation that funds a standing army of 560,000 but spends less than 2% of its GDP on education (illiteracy is 40%) and under 1% on health.
Pakistan’s governments have alternated between civilian and military, democratic and authoritarian, relatively secular and Islamist. The current government, formed after the general election in February 2024, is a coalition of the centre-right, Punjabi-based Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) and the centre-left, Sindh-based Pakistan People’s Party, although candidates aligned with formed prime minister Imran Khan (now imprisoned) won the most seats in the National Assembly.
The recent election marked the first time that the country has voted in a civilian parliament three times in a row. However, no Pakistani prime minister has completed a full five-year term since the country’s foundation in 1947, largely because the army has always exerted considerable political control even outside periods of explicit military rule.
The armed forces of Pakistan are the sixth largest in the world in terms of numbers in full-time service. Like its neighbour India, the country has nuclear weapons and, since Pakistan left India, the two countries have gone to war four times with frequent more minor skirmishes.