Kashmir conflict in the context of "Subdivisions of Pakistan"

The Durand Line, also known as the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, is a 2,640-kilometre (1,640 mi) international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. India also claims a land border with Afghanistan, on the eastern end of the Durand Line, between Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor and Gilgit, administered by Pakistan but also claimed by India as part of the disputed Kashmir region. The western end runs to the border with Iran and the eastern end to the border with China.

The Durand Line was established in 1893 as the international border between the Emirate of Afghanistan and the British Indian Empire by Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat of the Indian Civil Service, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan, to fix the limit of their respective spheres of influence and improve diplomatic relations and trade. Britain considered Afghanistan to be an independent state at the time, although they controlled its foreign affairs and diplomatic relations.

The history of independent India or history of Republic of India began when the country became an independent sovereign state within the British Commonwealth on 15 August 1947. Direct administration by the British, which began in 1858, affected a political and economic unification of the subcontinent. When British rule came to an end in 1947, the subcontinent was partitioned along religious lines into two separate countries—India, with a majority of Hindus, and Pakistan, with a majority of Muslims. Concurrently the Muslim-majority northwest and east of British India was separated into the Dominion of Pakistan, by the Partition of India. The partition led to a population transfer of more than 10 million people between India and Pakistan and the death of about one million people. Indian National Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India, but the leader most associated with the independence struggle, Mahatma Gandhi, accepted no office. The constitution adopted in 1950 made India a democratic republic with Westminster style parliamentary system of government, both at federal and state level respectively. The democracy has been sustained since then. India's sustained democratic freedoms are unique among the world's newly independent states, despite its history being perforated by several crises and recent worries of democratic backsliding under the premiership of Narendra Modi.

The country has faced religious violence, corruption, poverty, unemployment, language conflicts, naxalism, terrorism, separatist insurgencies in North East India and gender-based violence. India has unresolved territorial disputes over Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh with China which escalated into a war in 1962 and 1967, Kashmir with Pakistan which resulted in wars in 1947–1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999 and Kalapani with Nepal. India was neutral in the Cold War, and was a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement. However, it made a loose alliance with the Soviet Union from 1971, when Pakistan was allied with the United States and the People's Republic of China.

The insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, also known as the Kashmir insurgency, is an ongoing separatist militant insurgency against the Indian administration in Jammu and Kashmir, a territory constituting the southwestern portion of the larger geographical region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947.

Jammu and Kashmir, long a breeding ground of separatist ambitions, has experienced the insurgency since 1989. S. Paul Kapur has argued that "[p]opular discontent in Kashmir resulted largely from chronic mismanagement and malfeasance on the part of the Indian central government... [and] was not a Pakistani creation. The Pakistanis actively capitalized on Kashmiri discontent, however, and played a crucial role in transforming spontaneous, decentralized opposition to Indian rule into a full-fledged insurgency." Some insurgent groups in Kashmir support complete independence, whereas others seek the region's accession to Pakistan.

The Ministry of Kashmir Affairs, Gilgit-Baltistan, and States & Frontier Regions (Urdu: وزارت امور کشمیر، گلگت بلتستان و ریاستیں و سرحدی امور, romanized: vizārat-e-umūr kaśmīr, gilgit baltistān va riyāsateṅ va sarḥadī umūr) is a ministry of the Government of Pakistan. It handles the regional affairs of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan as both territories of Pakistani-administered Kashmir do not have regular provincial status within Pakistan due to political circumstances revolving around the long-running Kashmir conflict. In 2025 the Ministry of States and Frontier Regions, which handled the tribal and frontier regions of the country was merged into it.

Pakistan is administratively divided into four provinces, one federal territory, and two disputed territories: the provinces of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan; the Islamabad Capital Territory; and the administrative territories of Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit–Baltistan. As part of the Kashmir conflict with neighbouring India, Pakistan has also claimed sovereignty over the Indian-controlled territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh since the First Kashmir War of 1947–1948. It also has a territorial dispute with India over Junagadh, but has never exercised administrative authority over either regions. All of Pakistan's provinces and territories are subdivided into divisions, which are further subdivided into districts, and then tehsils, which are again further subdivided into union councils.

The Geography of Pakistan (Urdu: جغرافیۂ پاکِستان, romanized: Juġarāfiyā-Pākistān) encompasses a wide variety of landscapes varying from plains to deserts, forests, and plateaus ranging from the coastal areas of the Arabian Sea in the south to the mountains of the Karakoram, Hindukush, Himalayas ranges in the north. Pakistan geologically overlaps both with the Indian and the Eurasian tectonic plates where its Sindh and Punjab provinces lie on the north-western corner of the Indian plate while Balochistan, most of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Gilgit-Baltistan lie within the Eurasian plate which mainly comprises the Iranian Plateau and the Tibetan Plateau in the north.

Pakistan is bordered by Iran to the west, Afghanistan to the northwest, India to the east, and the Arabian sea to the south. Geopoltically, the nation is situated within some of the most hostile regional boundaries, characterized by territorial disputes and historical tensions, particularly the Kashmir conflict with India, which has led to multiple military confrontations between the two countries.

The China–Pakistan border is 596 kilometres (370 mi) long and runs west–east from the tripoint with Afghanistan to the disputed tripoint with India in the vicinity of the Siachen Glacier. It traverses the Karakoram Mountains, one of the world's tallest mountain ranges. Hunza District, Nagar District, Shigar District and Ghanche District in Gilgit-Baltistan administered by Pakistan, border Taxkorgan Tajik Autonomous County and Kargilik/Yecheng County in Kashgar Prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, China.