Indus Water Treaty matters: Signpost to catastrophe

The Indus Waters Treaty between Pakistan and India, applauded by the world for decades as the gold standard for water sharing, is under threat of collapse. India now actively sees it as a weapon of war.

India’s recent declaration that it is working to ensure “not a single drop” of water reaches Pakistan was not an off-the-cuff political remark. It was a strategic declaration. Union Water Resources Minister C.R. Patil said he was acting under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s directions and that India was actively developing the infrastructure needed to achieve this objective.

This is the latest step in India’s decade-long campaign to weaken, reinterpret and ultimately suspend one of the world’s most successful examples of transboundary water cooperation.

Water is not a bargaining chip; it is an existential resource.

- Nasim Zehra

For more than six decades, the treaty survived wars, military crises and prolonged hostility between India and Pakistan. Brokered by the World Bank, it became an international benchmark precisely because it insulated water from politics. That is no longer the case, and the treaty is now under unprecedented strain.

India’s policy shift, dragging the treaty into the arena of Indo-Pak confrontation, began much earlier. Following the 2016 Uri attack, Modi declared that “blood and water cannot flow together,” signaling a fundamental change in India’s political approach to the treaty. In January 2023, India formally notified Pakistan that it wished to modify the treaty, arguing that circumstances had changed and that its provisions no longer served India’s interests. Pakistan responded by expressing its willingness to discuss any concerns through the mechanisms already provided under the treaty.

Then came the April 2025 Pahalgam attack. In its immediate aftermath, India announced that it was placing the treaty “in abeyance,” invoking terrorism and changed circumstances as justification, and weeks later the two countries entered military confrontation. Yet the treaty contains no provision allowing either party to suspend it unilaterally. Pakistan challenged India’s position through the treaty’s dispute-resolution mechanisms, and the Court of Arbitration reaffirmed that unilateral declarations could not terminate the treaty’s legal force. India rejected the court’s jurisdiction and declined to participate in the proceedings.

India now advances several arguments in defense of its position. It says the treaty has outlived its utility; that India’s growing population requires greater utilization of the Indus system; that Pakistan has obstructed Indian efforts to discuss the agreement; that Pakistan’s own water management is inefficient; and that terrorism has fundamentally altered the material conditions under which the treaty remained operational.

None of these arguments provides a legal basis for the unilateral suspension of an international treaty that contains agreed procedures for amendment and dispute resolution. Questions of domestic water management are matters of national policy, not grounds for discarding binding international commitments. Equally, if one party believes circumstances have fundamentally changed, international law expects disputes to be addressed through negotiation and legal mechanisms, not by unilaterally rendering the treaty dormant.

India has also reduced institutional cooperation under the treaty, including direct exchanges through the Permanent Indus Commission, while indicating that water-related information may instead be transmitted through diplomatic channels.

Delhi has announced engineering initiatives, including dams, reservoirs and tunnels, on the western rivers allocated to Pakistan under the treaty. Once constructed, Pakistan argues, these structures will give India the ability to regulate downstream flows and rob Pakistan of its water. Recent Indian moves and statements are a clear signpost to this dark reality.

For Pakistan, this is not simply another bilateral disagreement. The Indus basin underpins the country’s agriculture, food security, hydropower generation and drinking water supply. Water is not a bargaining chip; it is an existential resource.

Pakistan has responded through law and diplomacy, while continuing to emphasize that dialogue remains the only sustainable path forward. Islamabad will continue to pursue international legal remedies and to mobilize diplomatic support. But this alone is unlikely to push back Delhi’s intent, or to help Pakistan salvage the gold standard of water sharing.

The crisis also carries global implications. The decades-old warning about water wars, it seems, is upon us. If one of the world’s best-known water-sharing agreements can be unilaterally suspended whenever political relations deteriorate, the consequences extend far beyond South Asia. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide depend on rivers governed by treaties between upstream and downstream states. The international community cannot remain indifferent, because this crisis is no longer merely about India and Pakistan. It is about whether international agreements governing resources indispensable to human survival can endure periods of political confrontation.

Pakistan-India confrontation has produced trade suspension, the downgrading of diplomatic relations, sanctions and even wars. The suspension of water, because it threatens life itself, should be unthinkable. For India, it is not. India is turning water into an instrument of coercion, a tool of war.

Rejecting treaties and replacing them with coercion and force as the means of settling disputes is a dangerous path to confrontation and chaos. In South Asia, where two nuclear-armed states confront one another, any sustained escalation carries immense risks that no responsible nation can afford to ignore. The prospect of catastrophic destruction is not beyond imagination.

For Pakistan and India, there is only one responsible course forward: dialogue, diplomacy and respect for international agreements. Dialogue, not force, delivers viable settlements.

- Nasim Zehra is an author, analyst and national security expert. X: @NasimZehra