Pakistan occupies the north-western part of the sub-continent of Indo-Pakistan. It is in the Northern Hemisphere at a longitude between 23oE and 38oE. The total area is 891,940 square kilometers. The capital is Islamabad.

Pakistan lies between Iran to the West, Afghanistan to the north west, India to the east, and China to the north east. The southern frontier is the Arabian Sea with the coastline of some 520 miles. The border with Afghanistan is the Durand line which is 2,240 kilometers long. The Indo-Pakistan border is 1,600 kilometers. About one-third of the Pakistan-India frontier is the cease-fire line in the Jammu and Kashmir region, disputed between the two countries since their independence. Pakistan is over three times the size of Great Britain.

The boundary with Iran, some 500 miles in length, was first delimited by a British commission is 1893, separating Iran from what was then British Indian Balochistan. In 1957 independent Pakistan signed a frontiers agreement with Iran, and the border between the two countries has been free of serious dispute.

The Pakistan-Afghanistan boundary was drawn in 1893 by Sir Mortimer Durand and was accepted by the king of Afghanistan in a treaty that same year. The definition of this boundary, called the Durand Line, was not in doubt when Pakistan became independent in 1947. Afghanistan, however, claiming that the Durand Line had been imposed by a stronger power upon a weaker, favored the establishment (which did not occur) of still another state west of the Indus River to be called Pushtunistan or Pukhtunistan. Pakistan maintained, and was supported fully in this position by Great Britain, that Pakistan was Great Britain's direct successor to the existing boundary.

In the northeastern part of the country, Pakistan controls about 32,358 square miles of the old British Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, in dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947 (the remaining 53,665 square miles are under Indian control). From the eastern end of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, a boundary of about 325 miles runs generally southeast between the PRC and Pakistan-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, ending at the Karakoram Pass. This line was both delimited and demarcated as a result of a series of notes and agreements between the PRC and Pakistan during the 1961-65 period. By mutual agreement, a new boundary treaty is to be negotiated when the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan is finally resolved.

The Pakistan-India cease-fire line runs from the Karakoram Pass to a point about eighty miles northeast of Lahore. This line, arranged with United Nations (UN) assistance in January 1949 after the preceding year and one-half of fighting, is about 480 miles in length and was last adjusted and agreed to by the two countries in December 1972. From the southern end of the cease-fire line the Pakistan-India boundary runs irregularly southward for about 800 miles, following the line of 1947 Radcliffe Award-named for Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the head of the British boundary commission for the partition of British India in 1947.

In southern Pakistan the Thar Desert in the province of Sind is separated from the salt flats of the Indian Rann (wilderness, or desolation) of Kutch by a boundary that was first laid down in the 1923-24 period. After partition, Pakistan contested the southern boundary of Sind, and a succession of border incidents finally resulted in the Pakistani-Indian hostilities of April to June 1965 in the Rann of Kutch. These hostilities were ended by British mediation, and both sides accepted the award of the Indo-Pakistan Western Boundary Case Tribunal designated by the secretary general of the UN. The tribunal made its award on February 19, 1968, delimiting a line of 252 miles that was later demarcated by joint survey teams. Of its original claim of some 3,500 square miles, Pakistan was awarded about 300 square miles; the new boundary was not significantly different. Beyond the western terminus of the tribunal's award, the final stretch of Pakistan's border with India is about fifty miles in length, running west and northwest to an inlet of the Arabian Sea.