West Pakistan

West Pakistan was the western province of Pakistan between 1955 and 1970, covering the territory of present-day Pakistan. Its land borders were with Afghanistan, India and Iran, with a maritime border with Oman in the Gulf of Oman in the Arabian Sea.

Following its independence from British rule, the new Dominion of Pakistan was physically separated into two exclaves, with the western and eastern wings geographically separated from each other by India. The western wing of Pakistan comprised three governor's provinces (the North-West Frontier, West Punjab and Sind), one chief commissioner's province (Baluchistan) along with the Baluchistan States Union, several independent princely states (notably Bahawalpur, Chitral, Dir, Hunza, Khairpur and Swat), the Karachi Federal Capital Territory, and the autonomous tribal areas adjoining the North-West Frontier Province. The eastern wing of the new country—known as East Pakistan—comprised the single province of East Bengal (which included the former Assamese district of Sylhet and the Chittagong Hill Tracts).

West Pakistan was the politically dominant division of the Pakistani union, despite East Pakistan making up more than half of its population. The eastern wing also had a disproportionately small number of seats in the Constituent Assembly. This administrative inequality between the two wings, coupled with the major geographical distance between them, was believed to be delaying the adoption of a constitution for Pakistan. To aid in diminishing the differences between the two regions, the Pakistani government decided to reorganize the country into two distinct provinces under the One Unit policy announced by then Pakistani Prime Minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali on 22 November 1954.

In 1970, the President of Pakistan General Yahya Khan enacted a series of territorial, constitutional and military reforms. These established the provincial assemblies, state parliament, as well as the current provisional borders of Pakistan's four official provinces. On 1 July 1970, West Pakistan was abolished under the Legal Framework Order of 1970, which dissolved the One Unit policy and restored the four provinces. This order had no effect on East Pakistan, which retained the geopolitical position established in 1955. The following year saw a major war erupt between West Pakistan and Bengali nationalists in East Pakistan with their own guerrilla military. After a full-scale military intervention by India in support of the Bengali freedom fighters and after subsequent defeat of Pakistan military, the province of East Pakistan seceded from its union with the Islamic Republic of Pakistan as the new People's Republic of Bangladesh.