DEFENDERS OF PAKISTAN 2009 (photo)

ARABIAN SEA, PAKISTAN - DEFENDERS OF PAKISTAN - Anti-aircraft guns aboard a Pakistan Navy warship firing at night. The Pakistan Navy is equipped with some of the most modern weapon systems of the 21st century: exocet air-to-surface missiles, acoustic torpedoes, anti-submarine rockets and much more. Pakistan, born on 14 August 1947, is bound in the East by India, in the North by China and the Russia, and in the West by Afghanistan and in the south-west by Iran. From the Pamir Knot, a complex citadel in the north of Pakistan known as the 'Roof of the World’ runs the Himalaya curve more than 3,000 kilometres to the junction of Upper Assam with China and Burma. This immense wall deters would-be invaders and has served as a natural fortress. To the northwest where the barrier deflects off the buttress of the Hindu Kush and runs southwards, its composition changes. The range of arid mountains stretching to the shores of the Arabian Sea is riven with many passes. Bound on three sides by land-masses of the sub-continent, Pakistan defends a thousand-kilometre long coastline running from Iran to the Indian border.