India’s reneging on the Indus Basin Waters Treaty. Since India released accumulated floodwaters, causing floods to wash over the Punjab, affecting about 1.46 million people, apart from all the destruction, of crops, livestock and of flooding 1769 villages, it has become clear that India does not just wish to dry up Pakistan’s water and render its fertile fields dry, but it aims to worsen the effects of climate change, and make Pakistan’s monsoons more traumatic than they already are. Worse, the danger which has been posed to Chinmiot and Hafizabad of flooding, posed by the threat to the Qadirabad barrage, makes it seem as if India wishes to use the monsoon floods as a nuclear weapon, though without the international odium of launching a nuclear strike. It does not need hydrological expertise to realize that sudden releases of large amounts of water will ultimately wear out the strongest structure, and could well cause the collapse of the barrages in Pakistan which are as much the basis of its irrigation systems as the Mangla and Tarbela Dams.
India used the recent confrontation over Pehelgam to attack Pakistani barrages. The forcing of embankments being blown up on three rivers was meant to save three cities. It is ironic that part of the floods, especially the discharges into the Ravi, were caused by problems at the Madhopur Barrage. First opened in1875, the present headworks were built in1959. That is another dimension of how India would like to use the Indus Basin: disregarding the loss to, or damage of, the lower riparian. If Pakistani barrages are damaged, or even swept away, because of Indian attempts to save its own irrigation works, so be it. Observance of the IWT did not entirely prevent malign use of the monsoon waters, but it did reduce it.
Ideally speaking, the Indus Basin waters are supposed to be operated as a single system, and that was one of the aims of the IWT. Getting India to start obeying it once again must be a priority for the present government. It must also be a priority for the international community, for the kind of behaviour that India is displaying, could well lead to Pakistan having its hand forced, and obliged to take measures which should be avoided between nuclear powers. Pakistan is finding it hard enough to handle the effects of climate change, only to find that India, instead of working to reduce it, is usingsits position as the upper riparian to make matters worse.
