Could India threat to cut water to Pakistan trigger nuclear war?
Since the Pahalgam terror attack in Indian-held Kashmir, Islamabad and New Delhi have been on the war-path. After suggesting Pakistan was linked to the attack, India downgraded ties with Islamabad and backtracked from the crucial 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).
On Tuesday, its Prime Minister pledged to cut the flow of water into Pakistan.
A trilateral agreement between India, Pakistan and the World Bank, the IWT provides New Delhi access to three eastern rivers: Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, while Islamabad gets the three western rivers: the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab.
Since becoming two separate states after the British partition of the subcontinent in 1947, India and Pakistan have fought several major wars over the Kashmir region, but this water treaty was never disturbed. Setting aside the IWT can become a nuclear flashpoint, as India and Pakistan are both nuclear powers, with China being the third nuclear claimant in the internationally recognized Kashmir dispute.
Controlling the icy desert of Aksai Chin, around 20% of the disputed territory, Beijing won a war with New Delhi in 1962, and maintains a stern and aggressive presence on the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with India.
As soon as New Delhi announced that the IWT would be “held in abeyance,” Islamabad warned that it could respond “with full force across the complete spectrum of power,” as any disruption to its water supply was an ‘act of war.’
Discussing how water security became a red line for Pakistan, Naveed Ali Shaikh, a military relations analyst and Kashmir expert, told TNA that suspending the IWT was considered an ‘act of war’ by Islamabad as India had issued a memorandum related to the Upper Bari-Doab Canal as early as 1948, that it was under no obligation to supply Pakistan any water as it came on their side by default.
After this incident, he said “the World Bank got involved and negotiated the present-day IWT for more than a decade before reaching a proper water-division agreement, so that this issue would not spark a war.”
The Indus Water Treaty
Realistically, India cannot limit the flow of water to Pakistan unless it builds mega-dams, as its upstream reservoirs do not have the capacity to store the heavy flow of water from the western rivers. According to this week’s data, the total inflows of Pakistan’s major rivers have surged past 236,000 cusecs.
But whenever India succeeds in storing its neighbour’s share, the impact on Pakistan could be drastic, as it has an agrarian economy, and water is its lifeline.
According to Pakistan’s most recent economic survey, 80 % of its agriculture and almost one-third of its hydropower depend on water from the Indus basin. In a country of 247.5 million, the agriculture sector contributes 24% to its GDP and 37.4% to employment.
Brigadier Asif Haroon Raja, a war veteran and defense analyst told TNA that India’s stance on the IWT could impact its water-sharing agreements with Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan as well, he noted that the suspension violates the “IWT clause Article XII may be modified or terminated [para 3] but not unilaterally.”
Observing that India does not have the capacity to block the water and just damaging its reputation, Raja said it requires 15 to 20 years to build dams, it “hasn’t been able to consume the water of the eastern rivers, and since it cannot stop the downward flow, the surplus water flows inside Pakistan. So, how will it manage the water of six rivers?”
Legal standing of India’s suspension
India cannot suspend the treaty unilaterally as there is no such provision in the treaty. This move would also violate international laws regarding upper and lower riparian states, where the upstream party cannot withhold water from the other.
Though the World Bank has a role in the treaty, appointing neutral experts and arbitrators, it is not the enforcement authority. Instead, there is a graded three-level mechanism for settling disputes involving “Indus commissioners,” neutral experts, and arbitration courts, which India has ignored.
This matter would be governed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969, in international law. Article 60(1) of the VCLT states that either party must commit a material breach to suspend all or part of the treaty. To challenge India’s moves, Islamabad could approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Mehmet Sukru Guzel, the Founder President for the Center for Peace and Reconciliation Studies in Geneva, told TNA that the IWT is a secondary dispute originating from the primary dispute, Kashmir, originating from the United Nations charter.
Adding that the waters of the Indus system belong to the United Nations, and “to prevent a new war between India and Pakistan, it [the UN] must focus on the solution of the Kashmir dispute, an unfinished decolonization process originating from UN Charter Chapter XI.”
Recalling that the legality of the Instrument of Accession signed by the Maharaja of Kashmir was rejected by the United Nations Security Council, Guzel added that the implementation of the UN Charter Article 73(e) remains pending, and the UNSC could hold a special session.
The Simla Agreement
In retaliation, Pakistan has threatened to suspend the bilateral 1972 Simla Agreement. But this could seriously impact the situation in Kashmir.
The Simla peace accord effectively divided Kashmir and established the Line of Control (LoC) between the two South Asian nuclear states, providing the framework for Indo-Pak diplomatic and territorial relations.
The Karachi Agreement, which ended post-partition violence in the Jammu-Kashmir region in 1949, established a ceasefire line (CFL) overseen by members of a United Nations truce committee. Without the Simla Agreement, the CFL would have been revived, as the Line of Control (LOC ) between India and Pakistan was created through the Simla pact.
According to Shaikh, “some amendments were made in the CFL and the LOC came in being”, and since the CFL was a trilateral arrangement, the UN would have a role to play.
Impact on the Kashmir dispute
Jan Achakzai, ex Information Minister for Pakistan’s Balochistan province, told TNA that suspending the IWT was a bad move by India as it could “open geopolitical vulnerability of epic proportions with China which is an upper riparian state, and it can also weaponize water against India.”
“From Pakistan’s point of view, it is impractical but it can trigger war. And this incident has drawn world attention to IOJK [Indian-held Kashmir], turning it into a flashpoint between two nuclear powers.
Pakistan had always made it clear that any “interference in its water flow” would not be tolerated, and though India threatened to suspend the agreement, it never went ahead with it. In 2016, the then-chairman of the Senate, Raza Rabbani had said that any such move would be “tantamount to an act of aggression and aggression will be met by aggression.
India had been citing climate change and changing requirements since a while, but these justifications can never meet the legal criteria of a material breach. And without substantive evidence, New Delhi cannot have sufficient grounds to invoke a suspension under the VCLT.
Since New Delhi was aware of the importance of the IWT for Islamabad, was this reactive measure taken to renegotiate the terms of the treaty, sabotage Pakistan’s agricultural economy or a political move to gain popularity?
Ch. Natique Ubaid, a strategic analyst, told TNA that this move by India was a “bluff played to gain political grounds within India by Modi.” Comparing the IWT with the Simla agreement, Ubaid said the latter was a broader diplomatic mechanism, so it could be suspended by either party, but it could create defence-related issues. Meanwhile, any hiatus in the IWT can “affect Pakistan’s whole eco-system.”
In this situation, if the Simla agreement is also set aside, Brigadier Asif Haroon Raja said there could be an “endeavor to correct the fault-lines of the ceasefire line disturbed by two major wars and conflicts by seizing the lost spaces.”
“The IWT suspension by India has added a new layer of tension, the ongoing standoff underscores the urgency to resolve the Kashmir issue,” he added.