Dr Ammad Farrukh
ON 12 June 2026, Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh reportedly declared that India would halt Indus River water flows to Pakistan over cross-border terrorism. Responding to his statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif declared every drop of water a red line and vowed a direct response. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif stated that Pakistan views water security as an existential national security issue, while threatening to target upstream structures built by India on the rivers.
The Indus Waters Treaty, signed between the two states, has survived three major conflicts between the two sides. It has outlasted governments and crises that should, by any measure, have broken it. Yet it survived and, by global standards, can be regarded as one of the most stress-tested bilateral water institutions ever built. However, India’s declaration of placing the Treaty in abeyance in April 2025, following the Pahalgam terror attack, has not merely intensified bilateral tensions but has also brought both countries closer to the verge of conflict.
The 1997 UN Watercourses Convention binds states to obligations concerning the equitable use of shared watercourses, prior notification, data exchange and good-faith performance. Such obligations do not simply dissolve through unilateral announcement. Likewise, the Permanent Court of Arbitration affirmed in its June 2025 Supplemental Award that India’s declaration could not deprive the tribunal of jurisdiction, since an arbitral award does not disappear because one party may call it illegal.
However, the situation appears increasingly serious as it has moved beyond political statements and the legalities of international law. On 23 July 2026, it was reported that water levels in the transboundary Chenab, Jhelum and Ravi rivers had sharply risen from medium to high flood levels, leaving downstream communities vulnerable to losses. The development was particularly concerning because India reportedly issued no prior warnings, leaving authorities and riverside residents with little time to prepare for potential flooding.
India has also reportedly stopped sharing flood data with Pakistan in a unilateral move, without early warning or alerts on shared transboundary rivers as required under established arrangements. Pakistan now has to rely on indirect information and rainfall forecasting systems to assess expected high flows, leaving little margin for taking necessary preventive measures. While the situation was eventually normalized and water levels in the Ravi, Jhelum and Chenab were reported as normal by the PDMA, these developments have created a deeply disturbing pattern.
The stakes are enormous. More than 250 million people in Pakistan depend on water in a country that has already been declared water-stressed. If India adopts policies that threaten Pakistan’s water security, both states could eventually find themselves on the verge of traditional conflict. Any future conflict between India and Pakistan would not only endanger the lives of approximately 1.72 billion people but could also threaten peace and stability across South Asia.
The Indus Waters Treaty must not be allowed to fail. Not for Pakistan alone, although the stakes for Pakistan are existential, but for every nation that has ever signed an agreement and expected the other party to honour it. Such treaties exist because, at their best, human beings recognized that some matters are too important to be left to the politics of the moment. Water is one of them.
The Indus Waters Treaty was not born out of Indian generosity. It emerged from the acute vulnerability created by Partition and the April 1948 canal-water crisis, when East Punjab stopped supplies to West Punjab after the expiry of a temporary arrangement. The episode deprived areas of Pakistan of water at a critical agricultural moment and left a lasting fear that upstream control could be used to determine downstream survival.
The Treaty replaced upstream discretion with legal obligation. The Inter-Dominion arrangement of 4 May 1948 recorded a live dispute over East Punjab’s supply of canal waters to West Punjab. The later Treaty superseded that temporary arrangement and established a durable settlement. Its purpose was not sentiment but certainty.
Pakistan’s position is therefore straightforward: India must honour the Treaty, share the required data, allow inspections, resolve questions through the Indus Waters Commission and Article IX and build only what the Treaty permits. If India continues to put the Treaty in question and acts as it did in July 2026, the next conflict between the two sides could be far more disastrous and may occur sooner than expected.
—The writer is COO of Bondh-e-Shams, a non-profit organization working to provide clean water using solar-powered technology.
