School of International Relations

The Zangezur corridor possesses socio-economic, geopolitical and geostrategic characteristics connecting Central Asia, the Caspian region, Azerbaijan and Armenia with Turkey. This suggests that the corridor, which will expand the transport-logistics network between Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia and Armenia, will positively impact regional trade and play an important role in establishing economic cooperation in the South Caucasus. The Zangezur corridor is redrawing the economic and transport map of the South Caucasus. This project significantly increases Azerbaijan's geo-economic weight and influence capabilities in the region. By ensuring access to international markets for previously closed and economically isolated territories, regional economic dynamism is revitalized. Thus, Azerbaijan becomes an important logistics center at the intersection of East-West and North-South routes.

Sheeppox virus (SPPV) is a major livestock pathogen causing economic hardship through reduced production and death of vulnerable sheep, with written descriptions of sheeppox-like disease recorded since antiquity. We report 21 novel ancient SPPV genomes spanning the Eurasian steppe Bronze Age (~1,700 BCE) to the Early Modern period in Western Europe, including multiple genomes obtained from medieval parchment. We estimate that major capripoxvirus lineages diverged ~11,500-3,700 years ago, overlapping known translocations and bio-cultural developments in sheep. Our dataset supports SPPV diverging first within the lineage leading to goatpox virus and lumpy skin disease virus, and that known gene inactivation events within SPPV and goatpox virus occur in our earliest SPPV genomes. These findings reveal that the food security of Eurasian communities have been threatened by sheeppox for over 3,700 years, and provide new insights to the genomic evolution and potential host adaptation of sheeppox virus.

This study employs a weakened version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as its analytical framework. Through comparative conceptual analysis, it examines Zen Buddhism's nonverbal practices (koans and silence) and Nishida Kitaro's dialectical philosophy of language (pure experience, absolute contradictory self-identity, and the logic of place) as two core conceptual cases. It proposes and argues for a "Middle Way" theoretical framework that integrates silence with dialectical expression. This framework acknowledges the habitual shaping of cognition by linguistic structures while elucidating how Zen Buddhism, through the radical suspension of language, and Nishida, through dialectical reconstruction within language, complementarily transcend the cognitive limitations revealed by linguistic relativism. This study offers a novel theoretical model grounded in Eastern philosophy for linguistic science and cross-cultural psychology. It demonstrates its operational potential in cross-cultural education through an illustrative pedagogical case study (presented as a qualitative teaching narrative).

The research discusses the significance of local governments in the context of democratic decentralization and the realization of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the Pakistani political landscape. The research aims to explore the historical development of the systems of local governments in the country, specifically focusing on the Local Government Ordinance of 2001 and the provincial acts in Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Employing qualitative research methodology, this study focuses on the constraints placed upon the functioning of local governments in terms of rendering services and achieving sustainable developments because of political instability, centralization of power, lack of autonomy in institutions, and limited financial capacity in the country. Despite such remarkable adoption of Agenda 2030 at the national level in the country, this research bears out that limited empowerment of local governments has been one of the pivotal hindrances to sustainable development in the country.

The world of diplomacy and geopolitics is rapidly changing in the era of information warfare, where the narrative is more important as compared to physical confrontation. This article is focused on the concept of ‘sharp power' where state sway the disinformation, coercion and employ manipulation to achieve political gains against the adversaries, in the context of Pakistan. The Pulwama attack of 2019, clearly depicts that how India utilized Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior (CIB), disinformation network and cognitive narrative to project sharp power against Pakistan. The methodology adopted for this research is based on qualitative analysis of documented cases i.e EU DisinfoLab's "Indian Chronicles", to grab the attention of the readers. The results identified gaps in Pakistan’s strategic communication, particularly absence of integrated doctrine, nonexistence of fact checking system, and defensive approach towards digital confrontations. The discussion culminates at identifying five pillar digital diplomacy framework strategy (i.e early-warning systems, rapid rebuttal units, strategic narrative development, diaspora engagement, and legal-diplomatic tracks) for Pakistan to sharp power narratives in this digital era. The article concludes with the recommendation of establishing a National Digital Diplomacy Directorate, in order to institutionalize a proactive, evidence based digital diplomacy architecture that could be utilized to detect, deter and degrade sharp power tactics. The purpose of this academic investigation is not predict but to illustrate the potential consequences of unresolved vulnerabilities and to provide a convincing solution for pre-emptive policy actions.

In this paper, the problem of distributed state estimation of human-driven vehicles (HDVs) by connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs) is investigated in mixed traffic transportation systems. Toward this, a distributed observable state-space model is derived, which paves the way for estimation and observability analysis of HDVs in mixed traffic scenarios. In this direction, first, we obtain the condition on the network topology to satisfy the distributed observability, i.e., the condition such that each HDV state is observable to every CAV via information-exchange over the network. It is shown that strong connectivity of the network, along with the proper design of the observer gain, is sufficient for this. A distributed observer is then designed by locally sharing estimates/observations of each CAV with its neighborhood. Second, in case there exist faulty sensors or unreliable observation data, we derive the condition for redundant distributed observability as a q-node/link-connected network design. This redundancy is achieved by extra information-sharing over the network and implies that a certain number of faulty sensors and unreliable links can be isolated/removed without losing the observability. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This study examines the significant economic crisis that Pakistan is currently facing and has been building for several years. One of the main reasons for this crisis is its external debt which has increased significantly, and it has failed to meet its debt obligations. In 2019, the government to address the crisis took several measures including seeking financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF program, which was intended to stabilize the country, pushed it into further debt crisis. This study critically evaluates the main reasons for the failure of this program in stabilizing the economy which include the conditions attached to the program. The government implemented these conditions, leading to austerity measures that hurt the most vulnerable segments of society. Based on primary data like elite interviews, this study finds the social and economic implications for these conditions on the people of the country. This study also used secondary sources for the data collection and both qualitative and quantitative methods. The tentative outcome of this study is that as such these agreements of loans are not an effective tool for development, fixing it will divert Pakistan from more meaningful approaches that it can use to promote the development in the country. These approaches include improving governance, implementing an effective economic strategy, utilizing the country’s natural resources for profitable ventures, attracting foreign direct investment, developing capital markets, promoting microfinance, reducing taxes, increasing remittances, and taking advantage of trade opportunities with emerging economies like China and India.

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into military systems represents a paradigm shift in warfare, posing unprecedented challenges to the foundational framework of international humanitarian law (IHL). This research paper examines the critical juncture between the weaponisation of AI and the potential collapse of IHL principles. Through a qualitative analysis of scholarly literature and policy documents, the study investigates how lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) erode the core IHL tenets of distinction, proportionality, and precaution. The findings reveal a tripartite crisis: first, algorithmic decision-making is ill-suited for the contextual judgments IHL requires; second, the autonomy of these systems creates a profound accountability gap, complicating legal attribution; and third, fragmented state practice and inadequate governance mechanisms have led to a regulatory impasse. The study concludes that the current trajectory of AI weaponisation, if left unchecked by a binding international regime mandating meaningful human control, threatens to render IHL obsolete, with dire consequences for global security and civilian protection.