MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Pakistan
Index
Pakistan occupies a position of great geostrategic
importance, bordered by Iran on the west, Afghanistan on
the
northwest, China on the northeast, India on the east, and
the
Arabian Sea on the south
(see
fig. 1). The total land area
is
estimated at 803,940 square kilometers.
The boundary with Iran, some 800 kilometers in length,
was
first delimited by a British commission in 1893,
separating Iran
from what was then British Indian Balochistan. In 1957
Pakistan
signed a frontier agreement with Iran, and since then the
border
between the two countries has not been a subject of
serious
dispute.
Pakistan's boundary with Afghanistan is about 2,250
kilometers long. In the north, it runs along the ridges of
the
Hindu Kush (meaning Hindu Killer) mountains and the
Pamirs, where
a narrow strip of Afghan territory called the Wakhan
Corridor
extends between Pakistan and Tajikistan. The Hindu Kush
was
traditionally regarded as the last northwestern outpost
where
Hindus could venture in safety. The boundary line with
Afghanistan was drawn in 1893 by Sir Mortimer Durand, then
foreign secretary in British India, and was acceded to by
the
amir of Afghanistan that same year. This boundary, called
the
Durand Line, was not in doubt when Pakistan became
independent in
1947, although its legitimacy was in later years disputed
periodically by the Afghan government as well as by
Pakhtun
tribes straddling the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. On the
one
hand, Afghanistan claimed that the Durand Line had been
imposed
by a stronger power upon a weaker one, and it favored the
establishment of still another state to be called
Pashtunistan or
Pakhtunistan
(see Independent Pakistan
, ch. 1;
Foreign Policy
, ch. 4). On the other hand, Pakistan, as the legatee of the
British in the region, insisted on the legality and
permanence of
the boundary. The Durand Line remained in effect in 1994.
In the northeastern tip of the country, Pakistan
controls
about 84,159 square kilometers of the former princely
state of
Jammu and Kashmir. This area, consisting of Azad Kashmir
(11,639
square kilometers) and most of the Northern Areas (72,520
square
kilometers), which includes Gilgit and Baltistan, is the
most
visually stunning of Pakistan. The Northern Areas has five
of the
world's seventeen highest mountains. It also has such
extensive
glaciers that it has sometimes been called the "third
pole." The
boundary line has been a matter of pivotal dispute between
Pakistan and India since 1947, and the Siachen Glacier in
northern Kashmir has been an important arena for fighting
between
the two sides since 1984, although far more soldiers have
died of
exposure to the cold than from any skirmishes in the
conflict.
From the eastern end of the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border, a
boundary of about 520 kilometers runs generally southeast
between
China and Pakistan, ending near the Karakoram Pass. This
line was
determined from 1961 to 1965 in a series of agreements
between
China and Pakistan. By mutual agreement, a new boundary
treaty is
to be negotiated between China and Pakistan when the
dispute over
Kashmir is finally resolved between India and Pakistan.
The Pakistan-India cease-fire line runs from the
Karakoram
Pass west-southwest to a point about 130 kilometers
northeast of
Lahore. This line, about 770 kilometers long, was arranged
with
United Nations (UN) assistance at the end of the
Indo-Pakistani
War of 1947-48. The cease-fire line came into effect on
January
1, 1949, after eighteen months of fighting and was last
adjusted
and agreed upon by the two countries in the Simla
Agreement of
July 1972. Since then, it has been generally known as the
Line of
Control.
The Pakistan-India boundary continues irregularly
southward
for about 1,280 kilometers, following the line of the 1947
Radcliffe Award, named for Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the head
of the
British boundary commission on the partition of Punjab and
Bengal
in 1947. Although this boundary with India is not formally
disputed, passions still run high on both sides of the
border.
Many Indians had expected the original boundary line to
run
farther to the west, thereby ceding Lahore to India;
Pakistanis
had expected the line to run much farther east, possibly
granting
them control of Delhi, the imperial capital of the Mughal
Empire.
The southern borders are far less contentious than
those in
the north. The Thar Desert in the province of Sindh is
separated
in the south from the salt flats of the Rann of Kutch by a
boundary that was first delineated in 1923-24. After
partition,
Pakistan contested the southern boundary of Sindh, and a
succession of border incidents resulted. They were less
dangerous
and less widespread, however, than the conflict that
erupted in
Kashmir in the Indo-Pakistani War of August 1965. These
southern
hostilities were ended by British mediation, and both
sides
accepted the award of the Indo-Pakistan Western Boundary
Case
Tribunal designated by the UN secretary general. The
tribunal
made its award on February 19, 1968, delimiting a line of
403
kilometers that was later demarcated by joint survey
teams. Of
its original claim of some 9,100 square kilometers,
Pakistan was
awarded only about 780 square kilometers. Beyond the
western
terminus of the tribunal's award, the final stretch of
Pakistan's
border with India is about 80 kilometers long, running
west and
southwest to an inlet of the Arabian Sea.
Data as of April 1994
|
|