India, July 27 -- 'It is not over till it's over,' goes a popular aphorism. In Pakistan, this applies not just to the insurgency in Balochistan - intermittent since 1948 - or the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) since 2001, but also to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The last episode in PoK, which gathered momentum in early June, somewhat quietened after security forces killed nine people on July 14. However, the chief minister's car was greeted by a hostile crowd very recently. This makes PoK the third unstable border province in Pakistan.

International relations theory holds that a State's borders frame its sovereignty and legal existence. Against this backdrop, as each disenchanted party supports the other, Pakistan's perip...