India’s Threat to Indus Waters Treaty

Repeated threats by India to block or suspend its relative part of the Indus River waters provision under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) is not only a gross offence against international ways of law rather a futile, unrealistic move to pose as a hegemon at the regional level. This recent episode of Sabre rattling by the New Delhi reveals even more about India and its vulnerabilities as opposed to its abilities or strengths, that like the fallacy of a paper-thin mask, the pretense that India can be considered a power house in its region or a regional power all in all is nothing but phony when held to the up the yardstick of technical capacities, financial prudence or international law and regulation. India’s Threat to Indus Waters Treaty As India political leadership gets geared to another round of rhetoric against Pakistan, that they cannot allow Indian water to mix with Pakistani water and repeats the same jargon, Khon aur Paani Sath Nahi bah skate (blood and water cannot flow together) the fact remains that India has neither the real engineering ability nor any water storage facility nor the tactical planning to even remotely succeed in throttling the Indus water lifeline of Pakistan.
The dam infrastructure constructed by India on the western rivers of the Indus basin namely the Kishanganga and Ratle projects themselves are plagued with poor design considerations and violation of the laws, and are barely fit to contain and manage most of the lower flows and definitely not in a position to impound or divert large enough volumes that can be a serious threat to the water security provisions of Pakistan. However, these hydro power projects are minor nuisance operations that are not beneficial to India to halt, divert and store more water causing any strategic harm to the Pakistani agriculture industry or supply to the households, in particular, Punjab and Sindh provinces which solely depend on the flow of these rivers. India, as a matter of fact has less than a couple of such finished projects which could go to the extent of manipulating a part of the full capacity of the river system. Its dams are run of the river facilities which have no reservoir storage to take control or to back up the water flow. The hydrological size of the Indus Basin (one of the largest of the Asian continent) itself on the one hand makes such rhetoric threats unworkable, this pretentiousness is self-destructive in the face of simple geographic and engineering common sense. India just cannot dam these waters without incurring disastrous and uncontrollable up stream flooding over its own sides and destroying its own territory of Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab in the process. In any case, the water brinkmanship by New Delhi is the mere ploy to distract domestic attention of the spiraling crises at home, economy battling with relatively high unemployment rate, inflation soaring the roof, agrarian crisis, and political instability.
The fact that India has been denying the Court of Arbitration (CoA) to accept the case of Pakistan, disputing rather that the process must be restricted to the Neutral Experts, in itself violates the indicated dispute settlement procedures of the IWT. This declination shakes the trust of the world with the treaty-based system and gives a risky message to the rest of the world that India may not be relied upon to keep the international agreements that have been around a long time. Moreover, surpassing the limits of the design and operation of the dams that India has violated (e.g. Kishanganga and Ratle) already pose the risk of shifting of the timings and quantity of water that Pakistan dates on the rabi and kharif crops, with the risk of endangering the food security of 220 million people in Pakistan who rely on the Indus Basin as a source of drinking water, irrigation of crops, and energy generation. Any attempt by someone to influence or to disrupt such flows may cause a humanitarian crisis of a scale that the world has not seen before, and destabilize not only Pakistan, but also the South Asia.
These are some dangerous provocations that the international community cannot ignore. The course of water wars between nuclear armed neighbors like India and Pakistan is not just a technical bickering, it is an element of any impending armed war especially when no effective mediator is in place. In case India continues with this fantasy of a water war, chances will increase exponentially that rhetoric attracts military confrontation. As history demonstrates, Pakistani treats as a red line the issue of the Indus waters not a scale of pressure diplomacy. India in politicizing river flows risks taking the bilateral relations to the edge and incurring condemnation by the international community, besides measures of counteraction taken by Pakistan, which may be at the diplomatic and legal levels, but may even involve strategic action.
The rhetoric of Modi government on water war shows that it has a very poor understanding of the technical aspects of river management as well as political outcomes of breaching treaties. New Delhi, rather than invest in valuable soil infrastructure projects to mutual benefit of the two nations joint flood control, sediment management, and basin wide collaboration, is following the path of juvenile brinkmanship. Not only does this trust killing relationship sour the India Pakistan relations negatively, but it also makes India look bad in front of the international community as one that cannot be trusted to honor its treaties. The IWT is reckoned as one of the greatest water-sharing treaties ever, known to the world to have withstood wars as well as decades of hostility simply because the two opposing parties understood the disaster that would befall them in case they attempted to go under its foundations.
The Indus Basin is too important, too densely populated or too politically sensitive merely to be given over to the warmongering rhetoric. Multilateral organizations (United Nations, World Bank), prominent stakeholders (China and the United States) are obliged to put their feet in to strengthen the sanctity of the IWT and to discourage India to commit more offenses. In case it goes unregulated, the weaponization of water by India may lead to tit for tat rising, such as acts of sabotage of strategic facilities or even conflict, which would threaten not only the peace and security in the region but also globally. Finally, the fragility of India is revealed more than its power, since the country seeks to control the Indus waters. It shows a regime that sorely seeks to preserve the semblance of strength without the strength to fulfill the threats it poses. The self-defeat policy does not only hurt Pakistan but it hurts India itself, both politically, diplomatically, and economically. It is clear that as the cry over climate change ebbs and shortage of water intensifies in South Asia, collaboration and not confrontation will determine the destiny of the region. When India becomes so foolish on weaponizing water it should remember it is drowning itself along with the weaponizing.