THE canal based irrigation system of Pakistan is considered as one of the oldest and the largest integrated water net-work in the world.
The historical record shows that, the Upper Bari Doab Canal (UBDC) was originally built by fa-mous Muslim Emperor of India, Shah Jehan in 1693.
This canal system was used to carry water of River Ravi from Madhopur to Lahore.
Later in the history, improvements were made in the canals system under Sikh Rule in Punjab under Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
Maharaja Ranjit was the popular leader of the Sikh Empire in first half of the 19th cen-tury.
The Sirhind Canal is yet another large irrigation canal that carried water from the Sutlej River was inaugurated in 1882, during British era.
During the British rule, the canal based irrigational was further improved and expanded.
Un-der British India, Punjab became the largest canal based irrigation state and fruit basket, providing food to entire Sub-continent.
During the British era, the areas forming part of west Punjab (Pakistani Punjab) had extensive and well-built canal network, thus used to produce maximum agricultural products.
These canals were fed by the river water, channelled through several water head works.
As a result of manipulated division of Punjab by Boundary Commission under Radcliff Award, all these water head works came under Indian control.
Immediately after independence of Pakistan, India stopped water from flowing into the canals which were irrigating the vast agricultural land of Punjab.
It created a crises situation in Pakistan and for some time, Pakistan had to pay for the water, it received from In-dian controlled water head works.
This was the first strategic usage of water by India as a weapon against Pakistan.
Later on as a result of bilateral meetings between Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Indian Premier Nehru, tempo-rary arrangements were made to resume water supply to Pakistan.
Nevertheless, the control of head works remained under India for years until World Bank brokered the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in 1960.
Thereafter, Pakistan delinked its canals from eastern rivers and devised a new water feeding system from western rivers.
IWT-1960 gave exclusive rights over water of western rivers to Pakistan, which apparently was the best arrangement in the era of cold war.
It was a unique agreement over water distribution, since world-wide there have been precedence of division of water, rather division of rivers between upper and lower riparian states.
In order to manage the IWT, both states established Indus Commission which worked well till 1980s.
Nevertheless, since India is the upper riparian state and also an ille-gal occupant of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, whose masses wanted to join Pakistan.
In the late 1980s, India started manipulating with the water of western rivers, whose water was exclusively meant for Pakistan.
It started planning and constructing dams, water storages, water diversions and hydroelectric projects over these rives.
Practically, in the decade of 1980s India started manipulating with the water of Indus, Jhelum and Chenab against the essence of IWT-1960.
It constructed over a dozen large and small dams on all three rivers and water diversion of twenty kilometres on Neelum River a tributary of Jhelum River.
It constructed two major dams and hydroelectric projects; Bagliar dam on Chenab River and Kishanganga at Neelum River.
Construction of dams, hy-droelectric projects and water storages, reduced the down-stream flow of water, which has been a serious concern and grave violation of IWT-1960.
This all was done by India through a well-planned strategy, which aims to exploit Paki-stan, desertification of its huge agricultural land.
The strategy will constrain and starve the agrarian economy of Paki-stan.
As an upper riparian, India is using the water as a strategic weapon to ruin its agrarian economy which goes against the international.
As per International Water Law, the principle of equitable and reasonable “utilisation pro-vides that the riparian State should use the water resources within its territory in a manner which does not prejudice the interests of other riparian States”.
Since last few years, there is change in framing the water issue by New Delhi.
In 2016, Indian Prime Minister Modi said “Blood and Water cannot flow at the same time”.
This statement came immediately after the Uri false flag attack, which India used to defame Pakistan, once Is-lamabad was planning to refer the massive human rights violations in IIOJK to Human Rights Council of United Na-tions.
In order to subvert the Pakistani plan, this false flag terror attack was planned on Brgade Headquarters in Ur.
As a campaign of stopping the Pakistani water, Prime Minister Modi while addressing a gathering of farmers and peas-ants of Haryana State in 2017 said, ‘Indus River System belongs to India, therefore, not a drop of it should flow to Pakistan’.
On the side-lines of such threatening campaigns, Mr Modi was sending strong messages to Pakistan for renegotiating the IWT-1960.
All-together India had formulated an offensive strategy over the water of western rivers.
Since after the Pahalgam False Flag Operation, India Held in abeyance, the Indus Water Treaty in violation to the essence of this treaty and International Water Law, therefore, Pakistan should immediately move against Indian uni-lateral and illegal act at United Nations and World Bank (as a guarantor of IWT-1960).
Besides, Pakistan must formu-late a long-term strategy to preserve the water of three western rivers and flood water during monsoon.
— The writer is Professor of Politics & IR at International Islamic University, Islamabad.([email protected])
