Veena Malik and the battle for hydro-influence

Can Nawaiwaqt's anger be directed at possible Indian help to clean up Kabul River & build dams in Afghanistan?

You could say that Veena Malik is having a Toba Tek Singh moment. Amend that to Bobby, the Indian monkey, being happily fed along with his Pakistani simian friend, Raju, in Bahawalpur zoo. It might be time to ask Nawaiwaqt, the venerable Urdu newspaper, what it has to say about these grave developments in India-Pakistan relations over the last few days.

Speaking of Nawaiwaqt, the internet is buzzing with one of its editorials published recently, which translates to English as the following: “India should be forcibly prevented from constructing these dams (in Kashmir). If it fails to constrain itself, we should not hesitate in launching a nuclear war because there is no solution except this.”

Certainly, that’s a startling piece of advice. The question isn’t where it originated from, Dubai or Rawalpindi, but why. Why and what are Nawaiwaqt’s editors so upset about that they wish they could obliterate the old capital with the blink of a baby’s eyelid?

Is it because of the start of the silly season and Nawaiwaqt’s press card-carrying journalists fear that Islamabad’s elite may be distracted by vacuous Veena’s vacant antics, or Bobby-the-monkey’s behavioural nonsense? The point is that there’s not even a conversation between the two water commissioners on the cards, or a dialogue between the senior most India-Pakistan bureaucrats on the Wullar/Tulbul barrage.

Water has been climbing on top of the India-Pakistan charts for some time now, with Jamaatud Dawa chief, Hafiz Saeed, and his friend Abdur Rehman Makki making blood-curdling noises about India’s alleged denial of the Indus waters to lower riparian Pakistan earlier in the year. Pakistan Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has also cited the water problem to explain his India-centric stance.

On their part, Indian analysts seem much more complacent, pointing to the 1960 Indus Water Treaty as a testament of good neighbourly behaviour. The dispute over the Baglihar Dam was resolved in India’s favour, even when Pakistan took the matter to the international tribunal and, as for the Kishanganga/Neelum River, India doesn’t seem overly worried about being asked to suspend some of the dam building until further assessments are made. (The Pakistani allegation is that India will divert the river water through a 22km mountain tunnel and over turbines for hydropower, thereby reducing the amount of water that Pakistan will get for its own planned 960 MW dam on the same river.)

Perhaps some of Nawaiwaqt’s anger towards India is a substitution for something else? Can it be directed at possible Indian help for Afghanistan to clean up the Kabul River in the Afghan capital and build sundry dams along its course? Is all this really a battle for hydro-influence?

India hasn’t said whether or not it will help Afghanistan build these dams, but the tension is already escalating. Earlier in the year, a US Senate study talked about India planning to build 33 dam projects on the Indus upstream.

India argues that Pakistan hardly uses up all the water that the tributaries of the Indus bring with it and that it is Pakistan’s bad water management, especially in the lean season, that is the crux of the problem.

Meanwhile, Delhi is concerned that China may be sending engineers to help speed up the building of its own dam on the Kishanganga/Neelum river.

Perhaps both sides should shed their inhibitions and ask Veena Malik to build a few bridges in the high Himalayas. On second thought, that might be easier said than done, considering, both India and Pakistan have for so long been carrying such muscular monkeys on their backs.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13^th, 2011.