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Tribune (21 July 2020)

Andrew Korybko

Pakistan is the only country in the world that doesn’t recognise the independence of Armenia. The South Caucasus country objectively exists and is a member of the UN, but Islamabad’s stance is a principled one practiced as a form of protest in response to Yerevan’s egregious human rights violations against the Azeris of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region. There are some very good reasons why Pakistan doesn’t recognise Armenia, and they’ll be touched upon briefly in this piece.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is at the core of Pakistan’s decision. This war lasted from 1988-1994 and remains frozen to this day. The Armenians of Azerbaijan’s then-Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (region) wanted to unite with their ethnic brethren in nearby Armenia in the twilight days of the USSR. This was a direct consequence of the widespread explosion of pent-up nationalist sentiment in the Soviet Union triggered by Gorbachev’s failed experiment with glasnost (“openness”).

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