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The east wing - present-day Bangladesh - is on the Bay of Bengal bordering India and Burma. The west wing - present-day Pakistan - stretches from the Himalayas down to the Arabian Sea.
The break-up of the two wings came in 1971 when the mainly Bengali-speaking east wing seceded with help from India.
The disputed northern territory of Kashmir has been the flashpoint for two of the three India-Pakistan wars - those of 1947-8 and 1965. There was a further brief but bitter armed conflict after Islamic militants infiltrated Indian-administered Kashmir in 1999.
 A marble edifice honours Pakistan's founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah |
Pakistan came under military rule again in October 1999 after the ousting of a civilian government that had lost a great deal of public support.
The coup leader, General Pervez Musharraf, pledged to revive the country's fortunes, but faced economic challenges as well as an increasing polarisation between Islamist militancy and the modernising secular wing of Pakistani politics.
Under growing pressure to reintroduce democratic rule, Mr Musharraf relinquished his army post in November 2007, but at parliamentary elections in February 2008, his supporters were defeated by the opposition Pakistan People's Party and former PM Nawaz Sharif's Muslim League.
The two parties formed a coalition government and an impeachment process was launched against Mr Musharraf, who resigned in August 2008.
Pakistan's place on the world stage shifted after the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. It dropped its support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and was propelled into the frontline in the fight against terrorism, becoming a key ally of Washington.
However, Pakistani forces have struggled to maintain control over the restive tribal regions along the Afghan border, where Taliban-linked militants became firmly entrenched. Since 2009, the government has been waging a rolling military campaign to flush the militants out of the tribal areas.
US forces' discovery and killing of Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden in a compound in the garrison city of Abbottabad in 2011 - where he had apparently lived undetected for five years - threw into sharp relief the lack of trust and widening rift between the allies.
Tensions with India over Kashmir have resurfaced regularly ever since the partition of the sub-continent, and the two nuclear-armed powers have on numerous occasions been on the brink of renewed conflict.
India has accused Pakistan of failing to cooperate adequately over the investigation into the November 2008 extremist attacks in Mumbai, and has halted talks on improving relations.
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