Ministry of Defence (Pakistan) of the army, navy and air force in Pakistan until 1956. In December 1959, the federal capital shifted temporarily to Rawalpindi, while plans for Islamabad were drawn up by then-General Ayub Khan's military government. The proximity of the Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi played a major role in the decision to relocate the capital. In March 1972, President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in response to criticism over the difficulties in inter-service coordination in previous wars decreed that all service HQs were to move to Islamabad. The Navy was the first to comply, with Naval Headquarters moving from Karachi to Sector E9 Islamabad
Islamabad is home to twenty universities, including the Quaid-e-Azam University, PIEAS, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology and NUST. The city is one of the safest in Pakistan, and has an expansive surveillance system with 1,900 CCTV cameras. The name of the city, "Islamabad", is derived from two words, "Islam" and "abad", meaning "City of Islam". "Islam" is an Arabic word which refers to the religion of Islam and "-abad" is a Persian suffix indicating an "inhabited place" or "city". Islamabad Capital Territory, located on the Pothohar Plateau of the Punjab region, is considered one of the earliest sites of human settlement