Pakistan And India-Water Disputes-News And Updates

[indian_warrior]

52 project !!. Where is money for india. Half of population live in proverty.
no toilets etc.

 

[FreekiN]

For those who think that Indian dams and barrages are not affecting Pakistan:

That's f-ed up.

 

[indian_warrior]

For those who think that Indian dams and barrages are not affecting Pakistan:

That's f-ed up.

Great pic. Pak should thank india because no need of the bridges after 52 dams constructed.

 

[NWO]

Hey, if those dams are in Pakistan's territory, why not just sent soldiers to them and control them? Then, scrap and sell them. Cheaper then just bombing them.

 

[BJlaowai]

Of course, India will try to scr3w Pakistan in every possible way. Exactly the same way as Pakistan has been doing to India. After all what are enemies for, eih??

BTW. Im Unable to open the link to the news clip in nation.com newspaper. Any other source to that article?

 

[Machoman]

Seems like that Indian's butt is really itchy in these days, and they really need a good suppository from Pakistan.

 

[SekrutYakhni]

When survival becomes impossible than dams become useless crap.
Your general couple of months ago said that you can fight on two fronts simultaneously i.e. China and Pakistan.
The statement was not made from "no man's land" and there is a reason behind that statement.
We will not run away at all. Our nation will fight and will die to defend our right and our country.
India has taken us to the point where there is no coming back.
Lobbying against us.
Destabilizing us from Afghanistan.
Blocking our water.
and so on.

Just wait for the right time. Opportunity always knock once in a life time.
Nowadays you guys are lucky but not forever.

Gob will help us InshAllah.

 

[BJlaowai]

BUREWALA – Chairman Indus Water Treaty Council Hafiz Zahoor-ul-Hassan Dahr has said that previous 131 rounds of talks between Pakistan and India under Indus Water Treaty bore no fruits and the latest dialogue would meet the same result.

He also warned that Pakistan could become another Somalia and Ethiopia.

Talking to ‘The Nation’ on Monday, Zahoor pointed to various projects launched by India to divert the water flow of three rivers entering Pakistan from Occupied Kashmir and said these projects were aimed at controlling the water of Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers, which were illegal and a clear violation of Indus Water Treaty. He said India was constructing 52 illegal dams, including five large ones, of which as many as 32 small dams had already been completed while 12 others would be finalised in 2014.

Zahoor said New Delhi was also constructing Kargil Dam, the second largest in the world, on Indus, adding that that India was getting support from a consortium of nine non-Muslim countries, four multi-national companies, an international donor agency and three intelligence agencies to accomplish 17 mega water projects for controlling Pakistan’s water. He said India had seized 70 per cent water of Chenab and Jhelum rivers as a result of which over 0.9 million acres of land, being irrigated through Marala Headworks, was now presenting the view of Thar and Cholistan deserts.

Dahr said the Baglihar Dam was causing an annual loss of Rs140 billion to Pakistan and feared that India would soon stop entire water flow of Chenab and Jhelum rivers, turning 18 districts of Punjab and six districts of Sindh into a desert. He also accused Israel and the US for backing India, which resulted in bulldozing the Indus Water Treaty and lamented the fact that the international community was silent over the issue.

He urged the government to take the issue seriously to Indian water aggression. “If the rulers fail to adopt immediate measures, India will turn us into Somalia and Ethiopia,” he feared.

According to him, the anti-Pakistan forces have united and evolved a plan to turn the country into a desert and the irrigation system is being given to a Swedish company on contract to forward the vested interests of India. He said India was spending billions of dollars on this project with the financial support of Israel. He said it was very much clear that the Indian and Israeli lobbies were working on long-term projects to harm Pakistan.



'India plans 52 projects to control Pakistan's water' | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online

Now are some of our Pakistanis still going to sing aman ki asha anthem when our children in Pakistan die of thirst and hunger because of india's water aggression

Looks like this entire article is FAKE.
Sounds more like some Pakistani Strategic Think Tkans aka anti-India Conspiracy theorists Blog rantings.
Couple of things are dead give away..
1. Chairman Indus Water Treaty Council Hafiz Zahoor-ul-Hassan Dahr should be very well aware of provisions of IWT, the checks and balances and the arbitration clause built into it, instead of cribbing about what India has done or is supposed to be doing in future.
2. He talks about some conspiracy by Israel and US which is absolutely hilarious. Israel and US have nothing to do with IWT.

 

[BJlaowai]

Gotcha..
The original article is from a Pakistani Blog > Link

Cannot find anything on Chairman Indus Water Treaty Council. All Google search leads to articles similar to the one posted above.
Looks like Chairman Indus Water Treaty Council Hafiz Zahoor-ul-Hassan Dahr may not be a real guy after all...

 

[Omar1984]

Gotcha..
The original article is from a Pakistani Blog > Link

Your "Link" is not working and the original article is from The Nation, a credible Pakistani news source. And its more credible than your times of india.

'India plans 52 projects to control Pakistan's water' | Pakistan | News | Newspaper | Daily | English | Online

 

[Kabir Panthi]

Of course, India will try to scr3w Pakistan in every possible way. Exactly the same way as Pakistan has been doing to India. After all what are enemies for, eih??

Actually India has scrupulously adhered to the Indus Treaty, despite the thousand-year Jihad being waged from the Pakistani side.

 

[BJlaowai]

Hey, if those dams are in Pakistan's territory, why not just sent soldiers to them and control them? Then, scrap and sell them. Cheaper then just bombing them.

OOh.. u guys tried something similar in 1999, remember Kargil?
Couldn't hold on to well entrenched Himalayan peaks, close to LoC, How do you suppose to capture dams which are situated in valleys deep inside Indian territories?

 

[navtrek]

War or peace on the Indus?

Anyone foolish enough to write on war or peace in the Indus needs to first banish a set of immediate suspicions. I am neither Indian nor Pakistani. I am a South African who has worked on water issues in the subcontinent for 35 years and who has lived in Bangladesh (in the 1970s) and Delhi (in the 2000s). In 2006 I published, with fine Indian colleagues, an Oxford University Press book titled India's Water Economy: Facing a Turbulent Future and, with fine Pakistani colleagues, one titled Pakistan's Water Economy: Running Dry.

I was the Senior Water Advisor for the World Bank who dealt with the appointment of the Neutral Expert on the Baglihar case. My last assignment at the World Bank (relevant, as described later) was as Country Director for Brazil. I am now a mere university professor, and speak in the name of no one but myself.

I have deep affection for the people of both India and Pakistan, and am dismayed by what I see as a looming train wreck on the Indus, with disastrous consequences for both countries. I will outline why there is no objective conflict of interests between the countries over the waters of the Indus Basin, make some observations of the need for a change in public discourse, and suggest how the drivers of the train can put on the brakes before it is too late.

Is there an inherent conflict between India and Pakistan?

The simple answer is no. The Indus Waters Treaty allocates the water of the three western rivers to Pakistan, but allows India to tap the considerable hydropower potential of the Chenab and Jhelum before the rivers enter Pakistan.

The qualification is that this use of hydropower is not to affect either the quantity of water reaching Pakistan or to interfere with the natural timing of those flows. Since hydropower does not consume water, the only issue is timing. And timing is a very big issue, because agriculture in the Pakistani plains depends not only on how much water comes, but that it comes in critical periods during the planting season. The reality is that India could tap virtually all of the available power without negatively affecting the timing of flows to which Pakistan is entitled.

Is the Indus Treaty a stable basis for cooperation?

If Pakistan and India had normal, trustful relations, there would be a mutually-verified monitoring process which would assure that there is no change in the flows going into Pakistan. (In an even more ideal world, India could increase low-flows during the critical planting season, with significant benefit to Pakistani farmers and with very small impacts on power generation in India.) Because the relationship was not normal when the treaty was negotiated, Pakistan would agree only if limitations on India's capacity to manipulate the timing of flows was hardwired into the treaty. This was done by limiting the amount of "live storage" (the storage that matters for changing the timing of flows) in each and every hydropower dam that India would construct on the two rivers.

While this made sense given knowledge in 1960, over time it became clear that this restriction gave rise to a major problem. The physical restrictions meant that gates for flushing silt out of the dams could not be built, thus ensuring that any dam in India would rapidly fill with the silt pouring off the young Himalayas.

This was a critical issue at stake in the Baglihar case. Pakistan (reasonably) said that the gates being installed were in violation of the specifications of the treaty. India (equally reasonably) argued that it would be wrong to build a dam knowing it would soon fill with silt. The finding of the Neutral Expert was essentially a reinterpretation of the Treaty, saying that the physical limitations no longer made sense. While the finding was reasonable in the case of Baglihar, it left Pakistan without the mechanism – limited live storage – which was its only (albeit weak) protection against upstream manipulation of flows in India. This vulnerability was driven home when India chose to fill Baglihar exactly at the time when it would impose maximum harm on farmers in downstream Pakistan.

If Baglihar was the only dam being built by India on the Chenab and Jhelum, this would be a limited problem. But following Baglihar is a veritable caravan of Indian projects – Kishanganga, Sawalkot, Pakuldul, Bursar, Dal Huste, Gyspa… The cumulative live storage will be large, giving India an unquestioned capacity to have major impact on the timing of flows into Pakistan. (Using Baglihar as a reference, simple back-of-the-envelope calculations, suggest that once it has constructed all of the planned hydropower plants on the Chenab, India will have an ability to effect major damage on Pakistan. First, there is the one-time effect of filling the new dams. If done during the wet season this would have little effect on Pakistan. But if done during the critical low-flow period, there would be a large one-time effect (as was the case when India filled Baglihar). Second, there is the permanent threat which would be a consequence of substantial cumulative live storage which could store about one month's worth of low-season flow on the Chenab. If, God forbid, India so chose, it could use this cumulative live storage to impose major reductions on water availability in Pakistan during the critical planting season.

Views on "the water problem" from both sides of the border and the role of the press

Living in Delhi and working in both India and Pakistan, I was struck by a paradox. One country was a vigorous democracy, the other a military regime. But whereas an important part of the Pakistani press regularly reported India's views on the water issue in an objective way, the Indian press never did the same. I never saw a report which gave Indian readers a factual description of the enormous vulnerability of Pakistan, of the way in which India had socked it to Pakistan when filling Baglihar. How could this be, I asked? Because, a journalist colleague in Delhi told me, "when it comes to Kashmir – and the Indus Treaty is considered an integral part of Kashmir -- the ministry of external affairs instructs newspapers on what they can and cannot say, and often tells them explicitly what it is they are to say."

This apparently remains the case. In the context of the recent talks between India and Pakistan I read, in Boston, the electronic reports on the disagreement about "the water issue" in The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Hindu, The Indian Express and The Economic Times. (Respectively, Water Pakistan's diversionary tactic? - India - The Times of India, The Hindu : News / National News article112388.ece, River waters: The next testing ground- Hindustan Times, Pak heats up water-sharing, Pak takes water route to attack India-Politics/Nation-News-The Economic Times.)

Taken together, these reports make astounding reading. Not only was the message the same in each case ("no real issue, just Pakistani shenanigans"), but the arguments were the same, the numbers were the same and the phrases were the same. And in all cases the source was "analysts" and "experts" -- in not one case was the reader informed that this was reporting an official position of the Government of India.

Equally depressing is my repeated experience – most recently at a major international meeting of strategic security institutions in Delhi – that even the most liberal and enlightened of Indian analysts (many of whom are friends who I greatly respect) seem constitutionally incapable of seeing the great vulnerability and legitimate concern of Pakistan (which is obvious and objective to an outsider).

A way forward

This is a very uneven playing field. The regional hegemon is the upper riparian and has all the cards in its hands. This asymmetry means that it is India that is driving the train, and that change must start in India. In my view, four things need to be done.

First, there must be some courageous and open-minded Indians – in government or out – who will stand up and explain to the public why this is not just an issue for Pakistan, but why it is an existential issue for Pakistan.

Second, there must be leadership from the Government of India. Here I am struck by the stark difference between the behaviour of India and that of its fellow BRIC – Brazil, the regional hegemon in Latin America.

Brazil and Paraguay have a binding agreement on their rights and responsibilities on the massive Itaipu Binacional Hydropower Project. The proceeds, which are of enormous importance to small Paraguay, played a politicised, polemical anti-Brazilian part in the recent presidential election in Paraguay. Similarly, Brazil's and Bolivia's binding agreement on gas also became part of an anti-Brazil presidential campaign theme.

The public and press in Brazil bayed for blood and insisted that Bolivia and Paraguay be made to pay. So what did President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva do? "Look," he said to his irate countrymen, "these are poor countries, and these are huge issues for them. They are our brothers. Yes, we are in our legal rights to be harsh with them, but we are going to show understanding and generosity, and so I am unilaterally doubling (in the case of Paraguay) and tripling (in the case of Bolivia) the payments we make to them. Brazil is a big country and a relatively rich one, so this will do a lot for them and won't harm us much." India could, and should, in my view, similarly make the effort to see it from its neighbour's point of view, and should show the generosity of spirit which is an integral part of being a truly great power and good neighbour.

Third, this should translate into an invitation to Pakistan to explore ways in which the principles of the Indus Waters Treaty could be respected, while providing a win for Pakistan (assurance on their flows) and a win for India (reducing the chronic legal uncertainty which vexes every Indian project on the Chenab or Jhelum). With good will there are multiple ways in which the treaty could be maintained but reinterpreted so that both countries could win.

Fourth, discussions on the Indus waters should be de-linked from both historic grievances and from the other Kashmir-related issues. Again, it is a sign of statesmanship, not weakness, to acknowledge the past and then move beyond it. This is personal for me, as someone of Irish origin. Conor Cruise O'Brien once remarked, "Santayana said that those who did not learn their history would be condemned to repeat it; in the case of Ireland we have learned our history so well that we are condemned to repeat it, again and again."

And finally, as a South African I am acutely aware that Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in prison, chose not to settle scores but to look forward and construct a better future, for all the people of his country and mine. Who will be the Indian Mandela who will do this – for the benefit of Pakistanis and Indians – on the Indus?

War or peace on the Indus?

 

[blueoval79]

Poor water management by Pakistan is the only reason Pakistanis are facing this water chrisis.......and leadership has finally started to acknowledge their incompetence......finally.

 

[ameer219]

Great pic. Pak should thank india because no need of the bridges after 52 dams constructed.

If you got nothing better to contribute to this thread, then troll, then don't bother posting

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