Edited by Ali Aadil khan 

“India vs Pakistan: Operation Sindoor, Indus Waters, and a High-Stakes Power Game”

 

“Decades before water became a frontline issue between India and Pakistan, Saadat Hasan Manto foresaw the tension. In his 1951 short story Yazid, he depicted villagers grappling with fears of river blockades. One voice of reason dismissed it: ‘A river isn’t a drain—you can’t just stop it.’”

“That long-standing theory now faces its most serious test in 74 years—this time with nuclear-armed neighbours India and Pakistan at the centre.
In April 2025, following a deadly attack in Indian-administered Kashmir that claimed 26 lives—mostly tourists—New Delhi blamed Pakistan-backed armed groups.

India responded with a dramatic move: it withdrew from the Indus Waters Treaty, a 64-year-old agreement vital to over 270 million people, especially in Pakistan.

Islamabad’s National Security Committee called the exit ‘unilateral’ and warned that any attempt to divert water would be ‘an act of war.’

Within weeks, the region plunged into a brief but fierce four-day conflict in May. Both sides exchanged missile and drone fire, before a ceasefire was brokered by US President Donald Trump.”

“While the gunfire has subsided for now, the diplomatic war is far from over. Both India and Pakistan have launched global campaigns to assert their versions of the conflict.

India, however, remains firm on its stance. On June 21, Home Minister Amit Shah—widely seen as Prime Minister Modi’s most powerful lieutenant—announced that the Indus Waters Treaty will remain indefinitely suspended.

‘It will never be restored,’ Shah told The Times of India, adding, ‘International treaties cannot be unilaterally annulled, but we had the right to put it in abeyance—and we exercised that right.’”

“The treaty’s preamble speaks of peace and progress between the two nations,” he said, “but once that spirit is broken, there’s little left to uphold.”
For Pakistan—a lower riparian state—any threat to the flow of water is not just a diplomatic concern but an existential crisis.

Disruptions to river flows could devastate Pakistan’s agriculture, food security, and economy, impacting millions of lives. Experts warn that such a move might not just deepen hostilities—it could ignite a full-scale war.

That raises urgent questions: Can India actually stop Pakistan’s water? And can Pakistan defend against such a scenario?

The short answer: India currently lacks the infrastructure to completely halt the flow of rivers into Pakistan. However, experts note that even limited diversions or reductions—especially in the dry winter months—could significantly hurt Pakistan.

Compounding the problem, Pakistan lacks adequate reservoir capacity to store water in case of sudden disruptions. If India were to squeeze the Indus Basin’s flow even partially, Islamabad would be dangerously underprepared to cope with the resulting crisis.

The Indus River—ranked as the 12th longest river in the world—originates from Mount Kailash in Tibet, beginning its journey at an altitude of 5,490 metres (18,000 feet).

It flows northwest through the breathtaking yet contested region of Kashmir before entering Pakistan, where it travels nearly 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) southward to empty into the Arabian Sea.

In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the Indus is joined by its western tributaries—the Swat and Kabul Rivers—as it carves a path through rugged mountain landscapes.

As it descends into the fertile plains of Punjab, it merges with its five eastern tributaries: the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. These rivers originate in Indian-administered Kashmir and other Indian territories before crossing into Pakistan.

This hydrological setup—India as the upper riparian country and Pakistan as the lower—has long fueled mutual suspicion and geopolitical tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

A Global Challenge, Not Just a South Asian One

To be clear, transboundary water disputes are not unique to India and Pakistan. Throughout history, conflicts over water have been documented across civilizations.

In just the past 50 years, tensions have flared between Türkiye, Syria, and Iraq over dam construction on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, impacting downstream access.

More recently, Ethiopia’s construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Nile has sparked a major dispute with Egypt and Sudan, who fear reduced water flow from the upper riparian nation.

Even within South Asia, water-sharing remains a contentious issue. India, Bangladesh, and Nepal have ongoing disagreements over the management and distribution of waters from the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna river system.

‘Blood and Water’

Over its 65-year lifespan, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has weathered immense strain—from full-scale wars and insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir to cross-border skirmishes, terror attacks blamed on Pakistan-based groups, and even nuclear tests conducted by both nations.

But the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam, which claimed the lives of 26 civilians, marked a breaking point. Still, cracks in the treaty’s resilience had begun to appear much earlier.

In September 2016, a deadly assault on an Indian Army base in Uri killed at least 18 soldiers. India held the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad responsible—a group long accused of launching attacks on Indian soil.

Though Islamabad denied state involvement, then-Home Minister Rajnath Singh labeled Pakistan a “terrorist state.” Around the same time, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his first term leading the BJP government, famously declared: “Blood and water cannot flow together.” The statement triggered calls within India to re-evaluate the water-sharing agreement.

Nearly a decade later, following India’s formal withdrawal from the treaty, Pakistan’s former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari responded with even stronger rhetoric.
“The Indus is ours and will remain ours,” he proclaimed at an April 2025 rally in Sindh, the province named after the river. “Either our water will flow through it—or their blood.”

credited Al jazeera AI rephrased Report By TOP news