Every time Quetta buries its soldiers, the same question resurfaces in Islamabad: is Balochistan becoming another East Pakistan? Both Balochistan and East Pakistan were peripheries governed from a center that treated them as resource pools rather than partners. Bengali-speaking East Pakistan generated the jute revenue that built Karachi’s early economy while receiving a fraction of it back in development spending. East Pakistan sat a thousand miles from West Pakistan, separated by hostile Indian territory, making sustained military logistics nearly impossible once war broke out. And Balochistan’s separatist movements deeply lack the diplomatic credentials needed for being a de facto state unlike East Pakistan.