Pakistan was granted its independence when British India dissolved on Aug. 14, 1947. India was given its independence the following day.

The Dominion of Pakistan originally consisted of two non-contiguous territories on either side of India. Following a civil war, East Pakistan seceded in 1971 and became Bangladesh.

A chronology of major events in Pakistan since it gained independence in 1947:

August 1947: Pakistan gains independence.

October 1947: War breaks out with India in the disputed region of Kashmir.

September 1948: Pakistan's founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah, known as Qaid-e-Azam, dies.

January 1949: Cease-fire ordered by the UN Security Council takes effect in Kashmir.

April 1948: Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan and Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sign pact to protect minorities in both countries.

October 1951: Liaqat Ali Khan is shot dead at a rally in Rawalpindi.

January 1954: Constituent Assembly declares Urdu and Bengali as official languages of Pakistan.

May 1954: Pakistan signs mutual defence agreement with the United States.

September 1955: Pakistan signs Baghdad Pact for mutual defence with Turkey, Iraq and Britain.

March 1956: Constituent assembly adopts name of Islamic Republic of Pakistan and first constitution.

October 1958: Governor General Iskander Mirza abrogates constitution, enforces martial law with General Ayub Khan as chief martial law administrator. Political parties are banned. Ayub Khan becomes prime minister.

February 1960: Ayub Khan becomes first elected president.

April 1962: Elections for new national assembly are held under what was called "basic democracy" system.

September 1965: Full-scale war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, which ends after a UN call for ceasefire.

December 1965: Pakistan inaugurates first atomic reactor.

January 1966: President Ayub Khan and Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri sign Soviet-mediated peace pact in Tashkent.

March 1969: General Yahya Khan imposes martial law, dissolving national and provincial assemblies.

December 1971: India and Pakistan fight war over East Pakistan. War ends with surrender of 90,000 Pakistani troops and leads to creation of Bangladesh from the former East Pakistan.

December 1971: Yahya hands power to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who becomes chief martial law administrator of West Pakistan.

April 1972: Martial law is lifted and an interim constitution enforced.

July 1972: Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sign peace accord in Simla, India.

April 1973: Parliament approves new constitution.

August 1973: India agrees to release Pakistani prisoners of war held since December 1971.

July 1977: Army chief General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq seizes power, arrests Bhutto and declares martial law. Constitution is suspended.

April 1979: Bhutto is hanged after disputed conviction for conspiring to commit a political murder.

February 1985: Zia holds non-party elections and names Mohammad Khan Junejo prime minister.

December 1985: Martial law is lifted. The constitution, with amendments, is restored.

August 1988: Zia and many senior military officers are killed in plane crash near Bahawalpur.

November 1988: Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party win 39 per cent of vote in general elections.

December 1988: Ghulam Ishaq Khan becomes president. India and Pakistan sign agreement not to attack each other's nuclear facilities.

January 1990: An uprising against Indian rule in the Kashmir Valley breaks out, increasing tensions with India.

August 1990: President Ghulam Ishaq Khan sacks Bhutto's government. Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi is named caretaker prime minister until general elections in October 1990.

November 1990: Nawaz Sharif is elected prime minister.

April 1993: President Ishaq Khan dismisses Sharif's government.

October 1993: Benazir Bhutto becomes prime minister for the second time after winning general elections.

November 1993: Farooq Leghari, a Bhutto nominee, is elected president.

January 1994: Peace talks with India break down over Kashmir dispute.

November 1996: President Farooq Leghari fires Bhutto, dissolves parliament and calls elections.

February 1997: Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League party wins general elections by landslide margin. Sharif becomes prime minister for second time.

March 1997: Pakistan and India resume peace talks at foreign secretary level for first time since 1994.

December 1997: President Farooq Leghari resigns after a six- month legal battle to have Sharif investigated for misuse of power during his first premiership.

May 1998: Pakistan conducts five nuclear tests in response to India's tests earlier in the month.

August 1998: Guerrillas in India's Kashmir region kill 19 people as cross-border firing by the Indian and Pakistani armies runs into its sixth day.

October 1998: Pakistan and India end their first peace talks in a year with agreement to meet again next February in New Delhi.

April 1999: Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband are sentenced in absentia to five-year jail terms on charges of corruption.

June 1999: Weeks of border skirmishes erupt between Pakistan and India over Muslim militant infiltrators who seized hilltop positions on the Indian side of the line of control.

July 1999: Under pressure from the U.S., Pakistan orders Muslim militant infiltrators to withdraw from Kashmir, ending the standoff with India.

Oct. 12, 1999: Sharif fires the army's chief of staff who then overthrows the prime minister in a coup. Constitution is suspended.

May 12, 2000: Supreme Court validates the coup and grants Gen. Pervez Musharraf executive power.

June 20, 2001: Musharraf names himself president.

April 30, 2002: A referendum extends Musharraf's presidency by five years.

Dec. 31, 2002: Constitution is restored.

Dec. 25, 2003: Musharraf survives second assassination attempt in two weeks. Fourteen bystanders are killed as two suicide bombers blew themselves up as Musharraf's motorcade drives by.

Jan. 1, 2004: Musharraf wins a vote of confidence in the senate and national assembly.

Feb. 2, 2004: Abdul Qadeer Khan, the man credited with developing Pakistan's nuclear program, admits he passed nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

May 22, 2004: The Commonwealth announces that Pakistan will be re-admitted after a five-year ban. Pakistan was suspended after Musharraf's 1999 coup.

June 19, 2004: India and Pakistan resume talks on easing nuclear tensions between the two countries. The talks had been suspended three years earlier after Pakistani extremists were blamed for an attack on India's parliament.

Oct. 1, 2004: Twenty-five people are killed when a suicide bomber detonates a briefcase in a Shia mosque. Another 50 people are injured.

Oct. 7, 2004: At least 40 Sunni Muslims are killed when a car bomb explodes in the central city of Multan. Pakistan bans religious and political gatherings after this latest bombing.

Dec. 31, 2004: Musharraf says he's not stepping down as president and army chief – despite a promise to do – because his political opponents are threatening democracy.

Mar. 24, 2005: More than 10,000 protesters take to the streets of Lahore to express their anger over Musharraf's decision not to step down as promised.

Oct. 8, 2005: An earthquake, magnitude 7.6, strikes the Pakistan-administered part of Kashmir, near the city of Muzaffarabad. The earthquake kills tens of thousands of people in Pakistan as well as over 1,000 in India and four people in Afghanistan. The devastation leaves at least three million people homeless.

January 2006: A U.S. air strike on a village near the Afghan border kills 18 people. Pakistan says the target of the attack, Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda's second-in-command to Osama bin Laden, was not in the area.

February 2006: More than 30 people are killed and dozens more injured when a suicide bomb explodes in a Shia Muslim procession in northwestern Pakistan.

April 2006: A bomb explodes as Sunni Muslims conduct their evening prayers in Karachi, killing at least 56 people.

October 2006: A Pakistani missile strike kills as many as 80 people at a religious school near the Afghan border. The government says the madrassa was used as an al-Qaeda training centre.

November 2006: At least 42 soldiers are killed in northwestern Pakistan when a suicide bomber attacks an army training base.

Pakistan successfully test-fires a new version of its medium range, nuclear-capable missile.

February 2007: At least 68 people, most of them Pakistani, are killed in a bombing of a train travelling between New Delhi, India, and Lahore, Pakistan.

India and Pakistan sign an agreement designed to reduce the risk of nuclear war between the countries.

March 2007: President Pervez Musharraf suspends Supreme Court judge Iftikhar Chaudhry, sparking protests from lawyers and Pakistan's main opposition party.

May 2007: At least 27 people are killed and dozens injured in Karachi in fighting between supporters of Pakistan's suspended chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, and pro-government activists.

A suicide bomb attack on a hotel in the northwestern city of Peshawar kills at least 24 people.

July 2007: Pakistani soldiers storm Islamabad's Red Mosque, ending an eight-day standoff with militant students and clerics. The siege sparks a fierce gunbattle that kills at least 43 people.

Pakistan's Supreme Court rules President Pervez Musharraf's suspension of Iftikhar Chaudhry was illegal and reinstates the country's chief justice.

October 2007: Musharraf is re-elected president under a cloud of controversy. Pakistan's Supreme Court probes whether Musharraf was even eligible to run for the office while serving as head of the army.

Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto returns home on Oct. 18 after years in exile. Hours after arriving in Karachi, her convoy is rocked by a bomb attack. Bhutto escapes unscathed, but more than 140 are killed.

November 2007: Musharraf imposes emergency rule, citing threats from Islamic militants and a hostile judiciary. Citizen rights and press freedoms are restricted, while judges and lawyers are arrested. However, Musharraf insists that parliamentary elections are still scheduled for January.

Bhutto is placed under house arrest, confined to a padlocked house surrounded by thousands of riot police and a row of metal barricades topped with barbed wire. She calls for Musharraf to resign.

The 53-member Commonwealth votes to suspend Pakistan from its ranks until Musharraf ends martial law and restores his country's constitution. It was the second time since Musharraf seized power in 1999 that Pakistan has been suspended from the Commonwealth. In this case, a nine-member steering committee, which included Canada, met in Uganda and voted unanimously on the suspension after Musharraf missed a 10-day deadline to end the emergency rule. He had been pleading for the group to give him more time when the decision was taken.

Earlier that day, Pakistan's Supreme Court, which had recently been stacked with uncritical jurists, dismissed the final challenge to Musharraf's re-election in October, paving the way for him to rule for a third five-year term as a civilian president. Musharraf has vowed to give up his dual role as head of the army, which the constitution requires. But he has promised to do this before and never followed through.