Water as weapon
Water as weapon
To exert pressure on Pakistan after the Pahalgam atrocity, New Delhi has suspended the Indus Water Treaty. But, asks Amit Agnihotri, what impact willsuch diplomatic deterrents have?
In a move that is unprecedented over the past 65 years, India has suspended the Indus Waters Treaty to rein in Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
The World Bank-brokered treaty governs the sharing of Indus basin waters between the two South Asian neighbours and was signed in 1960 by India’s then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Pakistan president Ayub Khan.
India’s recent move to suspend the pact is significant, as New Delhi has never taken such a step before, even during the various wars it fought with Islamabad in 1965, 1971 and 1999.
Having suffered Pakistan-sponsored terrorism for decades, India has responded through several covert and overt military operations. But the deadly April 22 attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, in which 26 innocent tourists were massacred by Islamabad-backed terrorists, forced New Delhi to announce a slew of diplomatic measures, including suspending the Indus Waters Treaty, closing the Attari border, banning travel of Pakistani nationals and staff reduction in the Pakistan High Commission.
Later, on May 7, a military response code-named Operation Sindoor was also launched, in which nine terror camps operating from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the Indian territory illegally held by Islamabad since 1947, were hit.
As the latest conflict between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours escalated, causing alarm amongst world powers, New Delhi thwarted several attacks by Islamabad on its army bases and hit Pakistani military assets.
Operation Sindoor was halted on May 10,with US president Donald Trump claiming credit for the ceasefire even before India and Pakistan made it public.
For its part, India noted that any future talks with Pakistan would be focused only on curbing terrorism and vacating Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. But New Delhi reiterated that the Indus Waters Treaty will be kept in abeyance until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism.
While the treaty was signed in a spirit of goodwill and friendship, Pakistan hasfailed to honour those principles by promoting cross-border terrorism, India asserted.
‘Terror and talks cannot take place together. Terror and trade cannot take place together. And, water and blood also cannot flow together,’ Indian prime minister Narendra Modi said, indicating the mood in New Delhi. He also noted that India would not tolerate any form of nuclear blackmail, a trick often used by Islamabad whenever it was pushed to the wall.
The option of suspending the water-sharing treaty has been carefully chosen, as it does not violate any legal provisions and allows India to withdraw from the pact at a later date, if needed.
Under the 1960 treaty, Pakistan got control of the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab – while India controlled the eastern rivers, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej, with limited rights to use 20 percent of the waters from the western rivers.
New Delhi thwarted several attacks by Islamabad on its army bases
In effect, the suspension of the IWT means that India, an upstream country, could choose to block or release water at will from the existing dams, which would parch or flood the downstream Pakistan areas, causing losses to its agriculture, hydro-power generation and industry.
The suspension also means India could now speed up building more infrastructure across the Indus basin rivers, which, in turn, would allow it greater control over water-sharing.
All this could lead to food insecurity in Pakistan and further stress its teetering economy, as around 80 percent of agriculture and one-third of hydropower generation depends on the waters from the Indus basin.
Further, agriculture contributes to around 25 per cent of Pakistan’s GDP and around 40 percent of the workforce is involved in the farm sector.
Flooding of large areas, water shortages, electricity shortages and production shortages could give way to large-scale civilian unrest, which could lead to balkanisation of the rogue nation, it is feared.
To step up pressure, India has also decided to stop sharing hydrological data which has helped Pakistan plan the irrigation of crops, supplies of drinking water, forecasting of floods and the generation of hydro-power.
India’s tough stance has thrown water politics in South Asia into sharp focus
In addition, India has started planning more dams across the Indus basin to enhance its short-term and long-term capacity to store and release water into the downstream rivers at will.
Although New Delhi had been seeking a review of the IWT for some time to meet its water needs in the wake of climate change, Pakistan did not agree to the idea, citing the treaty. Over past years, Pakistan raised objections to the Kishenganga and Ratle hydropower plants on the rivers Jhelum and Chenab respectively, but India still went ahead with them.
Experts say India may not have sufficient infrastructure, such as reservoirs and canals, to hold back and divert large volumes of water from the western rivers during high-flow periods. Yet it could always resort to flushing silt deposited in the dams, which could flood the downstream areas.
No wonder, then, that India’s move on the IWT drew a sharp response from Islamabad, which said that it would see any move to divert water meant for Pakistan as an act of war. Worried about the consequences, Pakistan has urged India to discuss suspension of the treaty, but New Delhi has rejected the request.
India’s tough stance has thrown water politics in South Asia into sharp focus. China rushed to help its friend Pakistan by fast-tracking construction of the Mohmand dam in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region, to counter the threat from India. Recently, New Delhi objected to China’s proposed mega dam across the Yarlung Tsangpo river in Tibet, which flows as the river Brahmaputra in India. The massive project had sounded alarm bells due to the ecological risks it posed for downstream nations India and Bangladesh.
With India claiming that Operation Sindoor spelt out how New Delhi would respond to any future Pakistan-backed attacks, the question facing the world’s powers is whether or not the rogue nation will be willing to give up its policy of exporting terror.
Going by past experience, and given the upper hand the Pakistan Army has over the executive in running the nuclear-armed country, it seems unlikely.
The surgical strikes carried out by India against terrorist camps operating from Pakistan soil after the 2016 Uri army base attack and the 2019 Balakot airstrike, in response to the Pulwama attack, apparently had no sobering effect on the Pakistan Army, which went ahead with the Pahalgam misadventure.
So whether deploying water as a weapon will force Pakistan to change course remains to be seen.
Amit Agnihotri is a Delhi-based journalist who has worked with several national newspapers and focuses on politics and policy issues