On March 27, 1948, in Kalat, Ahmad Yar Khan, the Khan of Kalat, signed an instrument of accession bringing the Khanate of Kalat into Pakistan. Pakistani authorities have held that signing as the constitutionally final resolution of Balochistan’s incorporation into the state ever since. The Khan wrote in his own memoirs that Pakistani troops were already positioned near Kalat when he put pen to paper. His brother, Prince Abdul Karim, launched an armed rebellion within weeks and was arrested and imprisoned. Seventy-seven years later, both sides still cite the events of those months as proof that their reading of them is the correct one.

Pakistan’s legal argument is straightforward. The Khan signed the instrument. The document is valid. The accession is constitutionally settled. The Baloch nationalist argument draws from the same period and reaches the opposite conclusion: the signature was extracted under military pressure, and an agreement made under those conditions carries no legitimate authority.

The pre-accession record does not resolve the dispute cleanly. In August 1947, Pakistan and Kalat concluded a Standstill Agreement that acknowledged Kalat as an........

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