India and Pakistan's ‘water and blood' wars could spark global catastrophe
'Pakistan has violated the spirit of the treaty by inflicting three wars and thousands of terror attacks on India,' said India's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Parvathaneni Harish, last Friday, referring to the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960.
India suspended the World Bank-brokered agreement the day after gunmen killed 26 mostly Hindu tourists at Pahalgam in Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan also claims Jammu and Kashmir.
New Delhi blames Islamabad for harboring militants who staged the April 22 attack, as Harish noted in his remarks at a U.N. Security Council Arria-formula meeting titled 'Protecting Water in Armed Conflict — Protecting Civilian Lives.' Pakistan has denied responsibility.
By India's count, Pakistani terror attacks have taken more than 20,000 Indian lives in the past four decades.
'It is against this backdrop that India has finally announced that the treaty will be in abeyance until Pakistan, which is a global epicenter of terror, credibly and irrevocably ends its support for cross-border terrorism,' Harish announced. 'It is clear that it is Pakistan which remains in violation of the Indus Waters Treaty.'
India's action is the first-ever suspension of the pact.
The treaty, 'a rare beacon of cooperation between India and Pakistan,' allocates waters in the Indus basin. India got control of the eastern rivers of Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Pakistan controls western rivers, the Chenab, the Indus and Jhelum. The treaty is generous to Pakistan, allocating to it about 70 percent of the total water carried by the Indus River System.
Water stoppages pose a dire threat to Pakistan. Rivers covered by the treaty provide almost 80 percent of its water for drinking and irrigation.
'Water is a vital national interest of Pakistan, a lifeline for its 240 million people and its availability will be safeguarded at all costs,' a Pakistani foreign ministry spokesperson said on April 25.
'Any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan as per the Indus Waters Treaty, and the usurpation of the rights of lower riparian will be considered as an act of war and responded with full force across the complete spectrum of national power,' the Pakistani spokesperson continued.
'Complete spectrum of national power' is a significant phrase, given that Pakistan is a nuclear weapons state.
Nuclear war is always on the menu. India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 against known terrorist sites in Pakistan, and for four days the two nuclear-armed powers hit each other with air, drone and missile strikes. After India targeted the Nur Khan and Mushaf airbases, both close to Pakistan's nuclear weapons installations, an alarmed Trump administration intervened and brokered a ceasefire.
Ishaq Dar, Pakistan's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, told CNN on May 12 that the cease-fire could fall apart 'if the water issue is not resolved.'
India currently does not have the ability to deny water to Pakistan, because its upstream dams have only limited storage capacity. The most New Delhi can do with the current infrastructure is affect the timing of water flows to Pakistan.
New Delhi's goal is to prevent any water from leaving India, however, and the country is planning to improve its system of dams so that they do not have to release water into Pakistan.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has maintained a hardline stance. 'Water and blood cannot flow together,' Modi has said. 'Terror and talks cannot happen at the same time. Terror and trade cannot happen simultaneously.'
Most analysts believe that Pakistan's forces got the better of India in the four days of fighting. Whether that is true or not, Pakistan's army came out ahead at home.
'Rather than deterring its rival, India precipitated a retaliation that ended up burnishing the Pakistani military's reputation and boosting its domestic popularity,' wrote Georgetown University's Aqil Shah in Foreign Affairs.
So expect more hostilities. Shah's piece is titled 'The Next War Between India and Pakistan.'
There will be one for sure. Operation Sindoor, Modi said, had 'drawn a new line under the fight against terrorism.'
'This is a new phase, a new normal. If there is a terror attack on India, we will give a jaw-breaking response.' Modi has recently said that Operation Sindoor has not yet ended.
The conflict could spread to include another nuclear weapons state. Beijing, for instance, could intervene by blocking water flows into India. The headwaters of the Indus are in China. So are the headwaters of the Brahmaputra.
'This could well overshadow any previous, containable conflict between India and Pakistan,' writes Gregory Copley, the president of the International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, on the next war.
'It could be the big one.'
Gordon G. Chang is the author of 'Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America' and 'The Coming Collapse of China.'.
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