Water Wars

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”.

                                                                                                 -Sun Tzu

While the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) 1960 has survived three major wars and numerous conflicts between India and Pakistan, the last year saw tensions escalate to a point where a “water war” now seems inevitable — a water war which upper riparian India, who controls the flow of all five rivers into Pakistan, began playing long ago.

Recently, India has, in contravention of the international legal principle of pacta sunt servanda, threatened to revoke the IWT. This is in addition to the fact that India, in violation of the IWT, has been expanding its hydroelectric power project and dam constructions at an alarming rate, creating security and water risks for Pakistan.

India’s threat can have catastrophic effects for Pakistan. The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources has stated that Pakistan may run dry by 2025 unless immediate action is taken. No doubt, Pakistan has to put its own house in order but India too needs to be aware that ultimately if Pakistan’s 191 million people are faced with famine, Pakistan will deem India’s aggression to be an act of war, thereby posing serious security concerns for India. Cutting off Pakistan’s river flows would also entail major flooding across parts of India-Occupied Kashmir and Indian Punjab.

Furthermore, if India decides to unilaterally contract itself out of the IWT, and cut off Pakistan’s water, it sets a dangerous precedent for itself in light of its status as lower riparian to upper riparian China. The Brahmaputra flows into the Indian state of Assam, and any coercive measures taken by India against Pakistan, through blocking off water, could be replicated by China in its water-dealings with India.

The fact remains that India has always tried to control Pakistan’s sovereignty by using the threat of water, often even using it as a weapon of coercion. A Shiv Sina leader is reported to have said: “The plans India has in store for Pakistan will make them forget what happened centuries ago in Karbala.” Similar threats have recently been made by Prime Minister Modi: “Now every drop of this water will be stopped…Water that belongs to India cannot be allowed to go to Pakistan..” The first attempt at this was made during Partition when Lord Radcliffe altered the original boundaries of Punjab, thereby allotting the head works of Madhupore and Firozpur to India. Soon after Partition, on April 1, 1948, India dropped the gates of the canals carrying water to Pakistan, designed to affect thousands of acres of Pakistani land from north to south Punjab and trigger a state of famine. It was not until 1960, through the mediation of the World Bank, that the two countries were able to reach agreement to settle their water disputes through the IWT. I believe the IWT was born out of necessity for both nations and is one of the best examples in modern diplomacy of win-win for both parties.

India, on its part, has utilised its “exclusive rights” over the Eastern Rivers to the fullest. In fact, it has built/intends to build 24 hydropower projects: 17 on the Chenab and seven on the Jhelum.

Meanwhile, apart from building the Mangla and Tarbela Dams, Pakistan has been unable to build any storage facility of this magnitude. Kalabagh Dam, which is ready for construction, is lying un-built only because of certain vested interests within Pakistan who oppose its construction. Resultantly, Pakistan, while suffering the worst water shortages, lets more than 38 MAF of river water go to waste into the sea.

The current worldview is that water is a global asset, which no country can be allowed to waste and its persistent wastage by Pakistan is viewed with astonishment. India has devised a strategy to use this to its advantage and is pushing the idea of Treaty II, thereby building a case that since the surplus waters of the Indus are being wasted by Pakistan, India should be entitled to store this water on the Upper Indus, Jhelum and Chenab to fulfill its needs.

Pakistan, in response, is still unable to present a defence to this claim by asserting categorically that it is building the Kalabagh Dam. Instead, one finds constant statements from successive provincial governments in K-P, Sindh and even Balochistan asserting that Kalabagh Dam shall not be built. Even successive federal governments have been issuing contradictory statements.

India has capitalised on this infighting between the Federal and Provincial Governments and, as a counter-strategy, has in fact fuelled the controversy by supporting the anti-Kalabagh Dam lobby within Pakistan.

Many anti-Kalabagh Dam conferences have been held outside Pakistan, particularly in Washington, DC in 2002, and have been openly supported by India. In fact, the theme of the International Sindhi Conference held on November 9, 2002, in Washington, DC, was that if Kalabagh Dam is built then Sindh should secede from Pakistan; the speakers at the forefront were Indian Sindhis.

While the growth of Pakistan’s agriculture sector, its ability to meet energy demands and the capacity to feed its rapidly increasing population are all factors which are entirely dependent on the use of Pakistan’s water resources, scholarship in the area of water law in Pakistan remains virtually non-existent. Therefore, the object and purpose of the IWT is often misconstrued. Similarly, when arbitration awards, such as the Kishenganga award, are announced, there is little understanding of what we have gained and ceded.

Stemming from this vacuum, Pakistan has not been able to effectively lobby against India’s use of water as a weapon. The fact is that India’s threats of violating an international agreement warrant consequences, but again Pakistan’s Government has not done any homework on this.

While India has a clear strategy to continue its threats, and to lobby internationally that Pakistan’s water needs come second to India’s, we continue to be incapacitated by our own lack of vision and political will. The chaos surrounding Kalabagh Dam compels this writer to state that unfortunate is a country whose leaders can see but do not have the foresight.

While we call upon the Supreme Court to do something about Panama Leaks (with some folks even going so far as to claim that the Court should appoint NAB Chairman), continue to raise hue and cry about matters like Panama Leaks, our most crucial problems remain unresolved. Perhaps the Government of Punjab should petition the Supreme Court, under Article 184(1) of the Constitution, to have the Kalabagh Dam dispute between the provincial governments resolved once and for all. Such a petition can even be treated as a matter of enforcement of fundamental rights.

Mahathir once rightly said that Pakistan is blessed with something greater than wealth of oil and gold — its geographical location. CPEC being one example. But this will be of no avail if we cannot utilise this greatest resource of all — water. Wallace Stegner aptly stated: “Water is the true wealth in a dry land”. The question is for how long will we neglect our wealth to our detriment?

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2017.

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