North-West Frontier Province

Province of Pakistan; capital Peshawar; area 74,500 sq km/28,800 sq mi; population (1993 est) 20,090,000. It was a province of British India 1901–47. It includes the strategic Khyber Pass, the site of constant struggle between the British Raj and the Pathan warriors. In the 1980s it had to accommodate a stream of refugees from neighbouring Afghanistan.

The North-West Frontier was one of the great frontiers of the former British Empire, nearly 3,200 km/1,990 mi in length, stretching from the Karakoram Mountains in the north of Kashmir to the Arabian Sea.