DEFENDERS OF PAKISTAN 2009 (photo)

KARAKORAM MOUNTAINS, PAKISTAN - DEFENDERS OF PAKISTAN - In the high snowy wastes around K2, the world's second highest mountain, Pakistani troops monitor movement above 20,000 feet ready to respond to any intrusion on national sovereignty. A lone soldier stands guard at the shoulder of a snowbound pass as his fellow soldiers pray. 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, long coastline running from Iran to the Indian border.