Pakistan India Water Wars
Union minister Nitin Gadkari in a tweet confirmed that India would stop it’s share of the water supply to Pakistan in light of the Pulwama attack. This was
misinterpreted by media as a threat to ‘choke’ the water supply to Pakistan. Below we analyze the ramifications of the same.
If the diversion of the waters of the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas Rivers designated under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty for India’s use that Gadkari has promised is indeed state policy then there should really have been much greater debate and cogitation within government circles about its regional and international ramifications than has evidently occurred to-date.
Under international law, for a lower riparine country to be denied its legitimate portion of shared river waters can be
casus belli — cause for war. Fine, the onus will be on Pakistan to start one, and it is in no position to do so. The trouble is a war for such an elemental reason could quickly spiral into a war of annihilation unlike all the previous wars of maneuver that India and Pakistan have engaged in since 1947.
Damming and diverting the Indus River tributary waters is a matter of life and death for Pakistan – that can, quite literally, turn much of Pakistani Punjab and upper Sindh, in no more than 30 years, into an arid extension of the Thar Desert. The first thing to weigh is whether junking the Indus Waters Treaty is anywhere a proportionate response to the Pulwama provocation. Proportionality — whether anybody likes it or not — is an established central tenet of international law of war.
Secondly, it will immediately gift China the justification for damming and diversion of all rivers originating in the Tibetan Plateau — the Tsang-po (Brahmapurtra River) as also the Indus. Beijing has been more hesitant in building upstream facilities to siphon off water from the Indus because its all-weather friend, Pakistan, is at the lower end of this River.
Assuming Pakistan cannot and will not initiate an all-out war to settle the water issue for once and for all, how long does the Indian government reckon it will be before Beijing, citing the Indian precedent on the Sutlej, Ravi and Beas, orders huge construction projects to redirect the precious Indus waters in Tibet itself and away from its natural pattern of flow south of the Tibetan watershed and into the subcontinent?
What then? What case will Delhi make to mobilize international opinion against the Chinese action? As it is, Delhi has not done anything about the Chinese civil works and dams at the great bend obstructing the Brahmaputra. India will find itself squarely in Pakistan’s position of being unable to prevent diversion.
Source:
Pulwama Attack