Pakistan joined the UN on September 30, 1947, and has been an active participant in the UN and its specialized agencies and other bodies, as well as in various specialized UN conferences. In 1993 Pakistan was elected to a two-year term on the UN Security Council. In addition, Pakistani nationals have contributed their skills within the UN itself. For example, in 1987, Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani woman physician, became executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) with the rank of undersecretary general. Pakistan has also been the recipient of assistance from UN development organizations, including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in a variety of fields such as agriculture, water and sanitation, national planning, and human development. The UNDP, for example, allocated more than US$87 million for assistance to Pakistan for the 1992-96 program period.

Pakistan's view of the UN has necessarily been conditioned by its own needs and experience. Although recognizing the shortcomings and powerlessness of the UN in many situations, Pakistan has seen no alternative to the UN as a forum where weaker countries could appeal to the world's conscience against the actions of stronger powers. Consequently, Pakistan has called for solutions to international problems through UN auspices, most notably for resolution of the Kashmir issue. Pakistan also played a highly visible role in UN peacekeeping efforts, contributing more than 7,000 troops to the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM)--the largest single national contingent to any peacekeeping force in early 1994. Pakistan had troops serving with the United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNPROFOR BH) and had participating observers in a number of other UN mission (see Foreign Security Relationships , ch. 5).

Pakistan's participation in other international organizations, including SAARC and the ECO, reflect its desire to be an influential player in the geographic region of which it is a part. In addition, Pakistan has played a leading role in the OIC, and President Zia was instrumental in revitalizing the OIC as a forum for periodic meetings of the heads of Islamic states. Pakistan thus appears firmly committed to the utility of broadbased international cooperation.

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Political developments are examined in considerable detail in Lawrence Ziring's Pakistan: The Enigma of Political Development. For studies of Islam in Pakistan, Leonard Binder's Religion and Politics in Pakistan and Hafeez Malik's Moslem Nationalism in India and Pakistan are useful. For Pakistan's formative period, Richard Symonds's The Making of Pakistan, Khalid Bin Sayeed's Pakistan: The Formative Phase, and Wayne Ayres Wilcox's Pakistan: The Consolidation of a Nation are excellent.

Pakistan's first ten years or so are expertly covered in Keith Callard's Political Forces in Pakistan, 1947-1959 and G.W. Choudhury's 771 s Constitutional Development in Pakistan. The Pakistani bureaucracy is described by Ralph Braibanti in Bureaucracy and Political Development, edited by Joseph LaPalombara.

The Pakistani army and its political role are described in Fazal Muqeem Khan's The Story of the Pakistan Army. The dismemberment of Pakistan is investigated in G.W. Choudhury's The Last Days of United Pakistan. Useful accounts of Pakistan's foreign policy are Latif Ahmed Sherwani's Pakistan, China, and America and S.M. Burke and Lawrence Ziring's Pakistan's Foreign Policy. An overview of politics and government in Pakistan from independence through 1990 is provided in Craig Baxter et al., Government and Politics in South Asia. An analysis of political developments in the early 1990s is provided by Pakistan: 1992, edited by Charles H. Kennedy. (For further information and complete citations, see Bibliography.)

Data as of April 1994