The Confederacy of Barkhastan is a colossal, efficient nation, notable for its barren, inhospitable landscape, flagrant waste-dumping, and suspicion of poets. The hard-nosed, hard-working, cynical, devout population of 3.248 billion Barkhastanis are ruled with an iron fist by the corrupt, dictatorship government, which oppresses anyone who isn't on the board of a Fortune 500 company. Large corporations tend to be above the law, and use their financial clout to gain ever-increasing government benefits at the expense of the poor and unemployed.

The relatively small, corrupt, moralistic, well-organized government juggles the competing demands of Industry, Law & Order, and Defense. It meets to discuss matters of state in the capital city of Jizkand. Citizens pay a flat income tax of 9.0%.

The powerhouse Barkhastani economy, worth 230 trillion bariqs a year, is quite specialized and led by the Arms Manufacturing industry, with significant contributions from Uranium Mining, Woodchip Exports, and Furniture Restoration. Average income is 70,844 bariqs, but there is a significant disparity between incomes, with the richest 10% of citizens earning 207,530 per year while the poor average 19,076, a ratio of 10.9 to 1.

World leaders often feel uncomfortable when Leader tries to recruit them into selling cosmetics, sexuality-questioning teenagers are placed in locked rooms with dirty magazines and lewd posters, the government has declined to declare any particular religion as its 'official' one, and Leader has been self-declared as the Most Supreme Magnificent Overlord of Everything You Ever Saw. Crime is moderate, possibly because it is difficult to make it through a day without breaking one of the country's many regulations. Barkhastan's national animal is the eagle, which teeters on the brink of extinction due to toxic air pollution.

Barkhastan is ranked 173,906^th in the world and 2^nd in Central Asia for Fattest Citizens, with 9.71 Obesity Rate.