General Knowledge and Current Affairs
What this section tests
The GK block in the ASF Corporal/ASI written paper is mostly static - Pakistan's political and constitutional history, world geography, international organisations, sports and awards - plus a current-affairs segment covering roughly the last 12–18 months.
Static anchors worth memorising
- Pakistan joined the UN on 30 September 1947; the UN itself was founded in 1945 with headquarters in New York.
- OIC - Jeddah; SAARC - Kathmandu; IMF and World Bank - Washington DC; ICJ and ICC - The Hague; ILO - Geneva; UNESCO - Paris.
- Capitals and currencies of neighbours: Iran (Tehran, rial), Afghanistan (Kabul, afghani), China (Beijing, renminbi/yuan), India (New Delhi, rupee).
- Pakistan's four provinces and their capitals, plus Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir as administered territories.
Worked example
Question: “The headquarters of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is in --.” The instinct is to pick a large Muslim-majority capital such as Riyadh or Islamabad. The correct answer is Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where the OIC secretariat has sat since 1970. The reasoning step is to separate a country's political capital from the city that hosts an organisation's secretariat.
Traps
- Mixing founding dates: UN 1945, OIC 1969, SAARC 1985.
- Confusing the ICC (tries individuals) with the ICJ (settles disputes between states) - both sit in The Hague.
- Current affairs go stale. Any name of a sitting office-holder printed in an older guide may already be superseded, so verify office-holders and major appointments within the last week before the paper.