Resolved: Pakistan is not a legitimate sovereign state

BoP: Because Pakistan is generally recognized as a sovereign state by a variety of organizations, including by the U. S. State Department [1], the BoP rests on my opponent to prove that Pakistan is not a sovereign state. In order for Pakistan not to be considered a sovereign state, my opponent must prove that Pakistan does not have authority over its territory. He has yet to do this. All that I must do in order to fulfill my BoP is to negate my opponent's arguments. Framework I will agree with my opponent in saying that sovereignty is a balance of legitimacy and illegitimacy, however I have not been able to find the U. N. Criteria anywhere online and my opponent did not source them. I will accept them as being a part of what can be used to determine a nation's legitimacy, but not the only factors involved because if they were, the United States probably would not be considered a legitimate sovereign nation. Examples of this: The first criteria is that the nation cannot be involved in supporting a genocide. Under the Reagan administration, the United States supported several dictators in Latin America who greatly infringed on the human rights of their citizens [2]. Another problem with these criteria is that the fourth item violates the third. For nations to agree to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of a country that possess legitimate sovereignty is violating that county's sovereignty. I will now respond to Pro's main arguments. C1: Pakistan has participated in genocidal activities "This is a fact probably not known to many in the West, but the authorities of Pakistan have condoned and turned a blind eye to a systematic bratality and killing of Shia ethnic groups in Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan." This fact is so unknown to us in the West that a search on the BBC website for "genocide in Pakistan" yielded only one result [3]: A timline of Bangledesh that included information on 2000 dispute over comments on the 1971 war with Pakistan [4]. My opponent claims that the Pakistani authorities have condoned this genocide on Shiite Muslims, yet provides no evidence that this is the case. He does provide one source for this argument, however this source discusses the response of the Pakistani media, not the response of the government. Additionally, the article makes no claim that the genocide was condoned by the Pakistani government. C2: Pakistan deals with transitional terror organizations I concede that there are some relationships between some members of the Pakistani government and military and members of the Taliban. If supporting the Taliban is a sign of an illegitimate government, then the U. S. would also have been considered an illegitimate government when it supported the Taliban during 1980's [5]. The other argument made under this heading was that Pakistan funded terror operations in India almost since the creation of the state of Pakistan. This claim is unsourced and therefore unfounded. He does provide a source that discusses the arrest of a man for the Mumbai attacks. The man planned these attacks in Pakistan, but this does not mean that the Pakistani government was involved in funding the attack. C3: Pakistan has violated established international standards on nuclear technology The main problem with this section of my opponent's case is that, once again, he does not provide evidence to back up his claims. He claims that Pakistan has violated international standards on nuclear technology. The issue with the source he provides to show that Pakistan helped North Korea in the past is that the article is from 2002. He does not provide any evidence to show how or why the current Pakistani government is violating these international standards. I will also repeat what I said much earlier: It is a violation on a nation's sovereignty to tell them they are not allowed to posses a certain technology. Sources: [1]- http://www.state.gov... [2]- http://readersupportednews.org... [3]- http://www.bbc.co.uk... [4]- http://www.bbc.co.uk... [5]- http://www.scoop.co.nz...