The six-decade-old Indus Water Treaty, signed in 1960, was put into abeyance by India on April 23rd, 2026, after sixty-five years and exactly a day after the Pahalgam incident in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The pretext was that the attack was instigated by Pakistan. To date, India has not been able to provide any evidence of Pakistan’s involvement, nor has it been able to capture the perpetrators of the crime.
This in a region often referred to as the “most heavily militarized open-air prison”. Ironically, it was India that first committed an act of war and attacked Pakistan on 7th May 2025, innocent civilians including children were targeted and killed, Pakistan as a response inflicted a humiliating defeat on India in the skies, the land, and the sea. India called upon the US to intervene to stop the beatings.
The treaty, however, continued to be held in abeyance as an illegal act of weaponization of water by India, despite several calls from Pakistan and the international community. Pakistan exercised both political maturity and strategic restraint and acted as per international law. If I may add, the treaty is neither time, event, nor regime-specific, and its one-sided abrogation is categorized as an “act of war.”
Since the early 2000s, India has violated the treaty blatantly and has tried to force Pakistan to agree to India’s interpretation of the IWT, which includes the construction of hydro-power projects on Western rivers. In fact, India challenged the viability of the treaty and threatened to revoke it at its will several times, using orchestrated terrorist attacks as a pretext. Back in 2018, Former Prime Minister of Azad Jammu & Kashmir Raja Farooq Haider Khan disclosed that India planned to divert the Poonch River to create a drought in Pakistan.
There is a long list of disputed HPPs that India has completed or that are in the pipeline, which include the Wullar Barrage (referred to as the Tulbul Navigation Project by India), Kishanganga Hydroelectric Plant (330 megawatts), and the Ratle Hydroelectric Plant (850 megawatts), again located on the tributaries of the Jhelum and Chenab rivers. In fact, India is already constructing, or plans to develop as many as 201 hydroelectric projects on the three Western Rivers—the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—according to figures placed before the Court of Arbitration under the Indus Waters Treaty.
Of these, 52 are listed as completed, 44 are under construction, and 105 are planned. India had, by design, been eroding the sanctity of the IWT and manipulating it to its favor for over two decades now. Speaking during a discussion titled “The Indus Waters Treaty: South Asian Security at Crossroads”, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States Rizwan Saeed Sheikh put it succinctly: “There is no crisis of content in the Indus Waters Treaty … there is a crisis of intent in implementation.”
Pakistan was always on the right side of history, and the most recent verdict by The Hague Court upholds the IWT in a unanimous decision. The Permanent Court of Arbitration says New Delhi has no valid grounds to suspend the long-standing water accords. The verdict also calls for suspending hydroelectric projects in Jammu and Kashmir. The court categorically declared that the treaty between the two countries remained fully in force, as India had no justification for ending or suspending the agreement. The award on the status of the IWT by the Hague-based court was in response to India’s decision on abeyance and an order on Pakistan’s application dated March 4th. It declared that the IWT remains fully in force and India must observe its obligations under the treaty, including those relating to the design and operations of the hydroelectric projects on the Western rivers. If there is no provision for “abeyance,” what exactly is India holding in abeyance—the Treaty, or international law?
India, as expected, has rejected the ruling of the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration despite being officially a member of the court, saying that it did not recognize the court. In fact, the Indian Foreign Ministry said that the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration “has no jurisdiction on India’s sovereign decisions.” India can refuse to accept the ruling politically; it cannot turn an unlawful act into a lawful one simply by calling it a sovereign decision. The court pointed out that the IWT was of a type that would remain operational during an armed conflict, adding that such a conflict did not exist at present. The fact of the matter is that the treaty has endured three wars between the two countries.
Pakistan’s water diplomacy has remained anchored in the treaty framework and its dispute-resolution mechanisms. India politicised the Treaty; Pakistan legalised the dispute. Pakistan has also maintained that it does not object to India’s treaty-based use of the Western Rivers; its objection is to projects and designs that exceed the limits prescribed by the Treaty. This distinction is important because Pakistan is not challenging India’s right to develop hydropower, but seeking to ensure that such development does not compromise Pakistan’s guaranteed water rights.
India has never underestimated the significance of river waters in advancing its geostrategic interests in the region. India continues to actively pursue a squeeze-water policy against Pakistan weaponizing water which is Pakistan’s lifeline. In June 2026, India’s Water Resources Minister C.R. Patil stated that it was “certain” that “not a single drop of water will go” to Pakistan in the coming years, adding that India was “actively working on it” following directives from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The statement is significant. India is no longer disguising its water strategy. Water is being openly weaponized as an instrument of strategic pressure against Pakistan. The Indus Basin supplies about 80 percent of the country’s irrigated agriculture, a sector that employs 65 percent of the labour force and contributes roughly 25 percent to Pakistan’s GDP, according to data compiled by Chatham House. Any disruption or manipulation of the flow of the Western Rivers therefore has implications far beyond water itself. It directly affects Pakistan’s agriculture, food security, employment and economy.
The bigger debate is that it is not merely a bilateral dispute between the two nations at loggerheads with each other; it is more about agreements and arrangements bound by treaties. India’s refusal to abide by the treaty and an insistence on inflicting its biased interpretation of it on Pakistan sets a dangerous precedence. It seems very much in line with what Modi is doing in occupied Kashmir, to minorities in India, completely distorting the democratic, secular and constitutional fabric of the Indian society. Modi needs to be restrained for not what it’s doing to Pakistan, but for what it has done to India and holding the peace of South Asia hostage.
