Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (English: "Land of Pashtuns"), formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, is a region of northwestern Pakistan, with its capital at Peshawar. It has a population of 28,000,000 people, with 970 people per square mile. Urdu is the national language, Pashto is the provincial language, and English is the official language. Hindko, Khowar, Khalami, Torwali, Shina, Saraiki, Gujari, Maiya, Bateri, Kalkoti, Chilisso, Gowro, Kalasha-mondr, Palula, Dameli, Gawar-Bati, Yidgha, Burushaski, Kyrgyz, and Wakhi are regional languages.
History[]
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region
The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was founded on 1 July 1970 as a region of Pakistan. It had 28,773 miles (74,521 kilometers) in area, and in 2014, it had 28,000,000 people. The region's name means "Land of the Pashtuns" in Pashto, as the region has a large Pashtun population that is shared with neighboring Pakistan. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has a diverse climate, with snowy mountains along the Hindu Kush mountains and in the north, and the city of Dera Ismail Khan is one of the hottest places in South Asia. The air of the region is generally dry, and although large parts of the province are also dry, the eastern fringes are very wet, some of the wettest parts of Pakistan.
The largest ethnic group of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is Pashtuns (including 1,500,000 refugees from neighboring Afghanistan), followed by Tajiks, Hazaras, Punjabis, and the region is mainly Muslim (mainly Sunni with minorities of Shias, Ismailis, and Ahmadis). Kalasha Animists, Hindus, and Sikhs make up very small communities.
From 2004 onwards, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region was struck by violence during the War in North-West Pakistan, as Pashtun Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TNSM, and other terrorist groups rose up against the Pakistani government. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region became the site of many CIA drone strikes by the United States against al-Qaeda and Taliban commanders, while the Pakistani Army launched offensives against insurgents in the mountains and in the Swat Valley. As of December 2014, 29,499 Taliban militants were killed while Pakistan lost 5,000 soldiers dead, 8,671+ wounded, and 857+ captured (the US lost 15 soldiers killed). 3,440,000 civilians are displaced, 48,782 civilians were killed, and several cities were the locations of terrorist attacks.