AT PENPOINT
The 2025 monsoon itself is not over, and those affected so far have barely climbed the first rung towards rehabilitation, but it has already begun to provide its takeaways. The most important is that Pakistan has no friends to provide any direct help, that all are helpless before the wrath of nature. Another takeaway has been that India is proving itself a permanent enemy, and is now trying to weaponize the monsoon. Finally, and perhaps most important, Pakistanis are busy shooting themselves in the foot, and taking steps which ensure that the effects of the monsoon are actually worse than they are.
Though Pakistan is desperately trying to curry favour with both the USA and China, neither can stop or even mitigate the effects of the monsoon. Perhaps if either was to reduce its carbon footprint, it would help. The USA is headed by a climate change denier, however, who thinks it is a Chinese conspiracy meant to stop him making America great again.
Unfortunately, Pakistan is perhaps made vulnerable by being both a monsoon area and being irrigated by an exotic river, the Indus. Exotic rivers originate into humid regions and pass through arid lands. Apart from the Indus, the Nile of Egypt and the Colorado in the USA provide other examples. All have been host to ancient civilizations: the Nile to the Pharaonic Egyptians, the Indus to the Moenjodaro civilization, and the Colorado to Native Americans like the Pueblo and the Navajo.
One of the characteristics of an exotic river is that it floods annually, because of the annual retreat of glaciers by melting (they would return to full size in winter). For Pakistan, this is also the time of the monsoon, and the Indus is swollen by both rainwater and snowmelt. Pakistan faces another complication. It is the lower riparian. The upper riparian, India, made its intentions clear as early as 1947, when it cut the water supply to Pakistan, only releasing it after international intervention. It was because of this that the Indus Waters Treaty was put in plce, being signed in 1960, which allocated three of the tributaries of the Indus to India, the Beas, the Sutlej and the Ravi, and allocating to Pakistan the other two tributaries, the Jhelum and the Chenab, as well as the main river. The Treaty provided for an elaborate dispute resolution mechanism, well as for the World Bank to act as guarantor.
During the Pehelgam crisis in June, India declared that was suspending the IWT. How it could so, it did not explain, but that suspension was now being used as an abrogation, with the Indian government having said it would not end the suspension. Thus in addition to the snow melt and the rainwater, at least three Indian releases of water were added. One was from the Salal Dam, supposedly a run-of-the-river hydel project to which Pakistan has objected, and the other from the Madhopur Barrage. The Madhopur Barrage is one of the oldest on the Indus, to the extent that it had to be rebuilt in 1959. It was damaged, and might well require rebuilding. Release of water may have preserved the barrage, but the damage inflicted on Pakistan’s farmers was immense
However, the real danger is to come, for instead of a steady flow, the floodwater is released only when it has been built up at one of the storage points, with the release attacking as a relatively unguided missile, attacking every structure in its way, whether dam, barrage or even embankments. The result is that all these structures are weakened. Sooner or later, they will collapse, wreaking the sort of destruction that could be expected from an atomic bomb. That destruction would not only encompass the structure itself, but would flood vast tracts, wreaking further destruction. The only difference between that and a nuclear attack is that there would be no accompanying radiation.
Whether Indian hostility is to be blamed or Pakistani fecklessness, the world is about to witness Pakistan appealing for aid to repair the loss. This is despite the pledges made after the 2023 floods, the worst in the country’s history, going unfulfilled, and though the country can ill afford going further into debt.
There is a Geneva Convention prohibiting the destruction of irrigation structures. But India would claim that no military means were used. Pakistan would have to prove that it used its position as upper riparian to weaponize its water releases. That would not be so clear a violation of the Convention as using a nuclear weapon, which would also have a number of other implications.
The damage this year has been immense. Apart from other causes of destruction, there have been cloudbursts and resulting flash floods, while Gilgit Baltistan and northern KP have fallen victim to Glacial Lake Outflow Floods. At the time of writing, there had been over 1000 deaths while 6180 livestock had been lost. Also of deep concern was the loss of the rice and cotton crops, predicted to be in the billions of rupees. There has been much wheat lost, especially the thousands of tons stored in the open, leading to the very real prospect of a shortage which would only be met by imports, putting further strain on already scarce foreign exchange reserves. The DG Food Punjab has been made an OSD, along with many other officials, but it does seem a case of bolting the stabledoor after the horse has bolted.
Overall, this loss will also lead to a rise in inflation, not to mention that there will be a failure to meet the GDP growth target, which at 4.2 percent was considered ambitious by such international organizations as the World Bank, which had projected 3.6 percent. Considering that the government’s higher figure was based on growth in agriculture as well as large-scale manufacturing, a downward revision is inevitable.
While rural Pakistan has been targeted by Indian water terrorism, the urban areas are being targeted by Pakistanis themselves. There are two aspects to this. First, there is no proper solid waste management, with the result that drainage channels are blocked up. The effort to unclog them before the monsoon has been reduced to tokenism and photo-ops.
That was not the most worrying aspect, though it represented one of the most persistent. The solution would be to have a proper waste management system, but that is not done. A proper waste management system is not just desirable because of the monsoon, but provides many other benefits.
More worrying, though, is the building in empty riverbeds and floodplains. These are of the rivers given to India, and where the rivers have dried up. There has been some use as irrigation channels, but the riverbeds have mostly been left empty. Until someone had the bright idea of building housing societies in them. These societies have been exposed in the recent monsoons, as rainwater found its paths, the old riverbeds.
This means that not only the inhabitants need relief and rehabilitation, but the government has to provide some alternative to living where they do. This is no easy task, for many have invested generational savings to buy plots, and may not take kindly to taking up the government on the housing it will provide. The only saving grace is that people have not taken out much debt to build on those plots, so most exposure will not be of institutions but of family and friends who have made interest-free loans. One problem is that resale value in these societies will probably go down.
Whether Indian hostility is to be blamed or Pakistani fecklessness, the world is about to witness Pakistan appealing for aid to repair the loss. This is despite the pledges made after the 2023 floods, the worst in the country’s history, going unfulfilled, and though the country can ill afford going further into debt.
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