As one of countries beginning with P according to countryaah, Pakistan is a country in South Asia with (2018) 212.2 million residents; The capital is Islamabad.
Country facts
- Official name: Islamic Republic of Pakistan
- License plate: PK
- ISO-3166: PK, PAK (586)
- Internet domain:.pk
- Currency: 1 Pakistani rupee (pR) = 100 Paisa
- Area: 796 100 km²
- Population (2018): 212.2 million
- Capital: Islamabad
- Official language (s): Urdu, English
- Form of government: Islamic parliamentary republic
- Administrative division: 4 provinces, capital district, 1 area under federal administration (FATA)
- Head of State: President Arif Alvi
- Head of Government: Imran Khan
- Religion (s) (2010): 96.4% Muslims, 3.6% Christians and Hindus
- Time zone: Central European Time +4 hours
- National holiday: March 23rd and August 14th
Location and infrastructure
- Location (geographical): South Asia
- Position (coordinates): between 23 ° 30 ‘and 36 ° 45’ north latitude and 60 ° 55 ‘and 75 ° 30’ east longitude
- Climate: hot, dry monsoon climate, in the north cold winter mountain climate
- Highest mountain: K 2 (8611 m)
- Road network (2019): 185 063 km (paved), 78 712 km (unpaved)
- Railway network (2019): 11,881 km
Population
- Annual population growth (2020): 2.07%
- Birth rate (2020): 27.4 per 1,000 residents.
- Death rate (2020): 6.2 per 1000 residents.
- Average age (2020): 22.0 years
- Average life expectancy (2020): 69.2 years (women 71.3; men 67.2)
- Age structure (2020): 36.0% younger than 15 years, 4.4% older than 65 years
- Literacy rate (15-year-olds and older) (2015): 59.1%
- Mobile phone contracts (pre-paid and post-paid) (2017): 73 per 100 residents
- Internet users (2016): 16 per 100 residents
Economy
- GDP per capita (2017): US $ 1,546
- Total GDP (2017): US $ 305 billion
- GNI per capita (2018): US $ 1,580
- Education expenditure (2017): 2.8% of GDP
- Military expenditure (2018): 4.0% of GDP
- Unemployment rate (2017): 4%
From the 7th century BC, the area of today’s Ukraine was settled by Scythians. The Greeks established colonies on the north bank of the Black Sea. In the 3rd century BC The Iranian nomad people of the Sarmatians pushed forward there. At the time of the Great Migration, the region was inhabited by Goths, Huns and Avars, among others. Slavs settled in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. From the end of the 9th century, part of today’s Ukraine belonged to the Eastern Slavic Empire of the Kievan Rus, which arose on the central Dnieper and adopted Orthodox Christianity. In the 12th century the empire split into several principalities.
In 1239/40 the Mongols conquered the country. The greater part of Ukraine came under the rule of Poland-Lithuania from the 14th century. Cossacks on the lower Dnieper founded an independent state in 1648, which soon came under the influence of the Russian Empire. The west (Galicia) came under Austrian rule in the 18th century.
Ukraine was unable to maintain its state independence after the First World War. In 1922 it became part of the communist Soviet Union. The forced integration of the peasants into collective farms (kolkhozes) and the state terror under Stalin led to a famine (Ukrainian »Holodomor«) with several million deaths. The Second World War after Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 brought great destruction and human loss. Under German occupation, Ukraine was the scene of the Holocaust (e.g. the Babi Yar massacre), Soviet retribution, and partisan fighting. There were also mutual expulsions of Ukrainians and Poles.
The Babi Yar massacre
On September 28, 1941, under the pretext of resettlement, all Jews in the city of Kiev and the surrounding area were asked to meet at a precisely marked intersection near a freight station the following day.
In the series of reports by the Security Police and the SD »Event Reports USSR« No. 97 of September 28, 1941, it is officially stated:
“Allegedly there are 150,000 Jews. Verification of this information is not yet possible. In the first action 1,600 arrests, measures initiated to cover all Judaism, execution of at least 50,000 Jews planned. Wehrmacht welcomes measures and requests radical action. “
The victims were so perfectly deceived that it even surprised the SS:
“Although at first only about 5,000 to 6,000 Jews were expected to be involved, more than 30,000 Jews turned up who, thanks to an extremely skillful organization, believed in their resettlement until immediately before the execution.”
One of the murderers from Sonderkommando 4 a of Einsatzgruppe C later remembers:
“[…] The Jews were led by us to the edge of the hollow, there they ran down the slopes of their own accord. The whole shooting that day may have lasted until […] 5:00 or 6:00 pm. Then we were pulled back to our quarters. There was a lot of alcohol (schnapps) again that evening. “
The »USSR incident report« No. 101 of October 2, 1941 »balanced«:
“The Sonderkommando 4 a, in cooperation with the group staff and two commandos of the Police Regiment South, executed 33,771 Jews in Kiev on September 29 and 30, 1941.”
Quoted from: “Event reports USSR” No. 97 (September 28, 1941), No. 101 (October 2, 1941), Nuremberg documents no. 3145, no. 4418, no. 4423, no. 4777, no. 3137. [Templates in the Federal Archives in Koblenz and Berlin]
Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 did Ukraine become a sovereign state. However, there was an economic crisis and internal political conflicts, as well as an ongoing dispute with Russia over natural gas supplies. Mass protests led in 2004 in the “Orange Revolution” and in 2013 in the “Maidan Revolution” to democratization and a stronger turn to the West. In 2014 Russia annexed Crimea and supported separatists in the east. This resulted in a military conflict in which more than 12,000 people lost their lives. International peace efforts were unsuccessful. The revival of the peace process is one of the central election promises of April 2019 in the runoff election with 73% of the vote against incumbent Petro Poroshenko(* 1965) elected new president Volodymyr Selenskyj (* 1978).
