FOR over six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) served as a rare cornerstone of stability in South Asia.
Brokered by the World Bank, it successfully partitioned the Indus Basin, allocating the Eastern Rivers (Sutlej, Beas, Ravi) to India and the Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan. Despite surviving three major wars and numerous skirmishes, this resilient framework entered a state of unprecedented jeopardy in April 2025. Following a tragic terror attack in Pahalgam, India unilaterally declared the treaty held “in abeyance,” a move that shifted the regional water discourse from technical cooperation to strategic coercion.
This shift has caught the attention of international policy forecasters. In its ‘Top Risks 2026’ Report, the Eurasia Group, a leading US-based policy institute, identified the weaponization of the Indus as a premier global political risk. The report warns that by withholding hydrological data and suspending treaty obligations, India is using water as a tool of strategic leverage.
According to the Eurasia Group, this “water weapon” poses an existential threat to Pakistan’s human and economic security. With over 80% of Pakistan’s agriculture dependent on the Indus Basin, any disruption to upstream flows directly jeopardizes food security and the livelihoods of millions of farming households. The report frames this not just as a bilateral dispute, but as a systemic risk to regional stability, where water scarcity could trigger cascading humanitarian crises, including malnutrition and mass economic displacement.
Nowhere is this tension more visible than on the Chenab River. In a dangerous departure from treaty-bound norms, India has begun manipulating flows with little to no notification to the downstream riparian. In late 2025, flows at Head Marala was observed to fluctuate wildly-surging to 58000 cusecs before being sharply throttled. This manipulation is bolstered by India’s accelerated development of massive hydroelectric projects on the Western Rivers.
Under the cover of “abeyance,” India has fast-tracked disputed projects such as the 1856 MW Sawalkote and Dulhasti Stage-II on the Chenab. Pakistan maintains that these projects violate the IWT’s design constraints and were only made possible by India’s decision to bypass the mandatory third-party oversight of the Permanent Indus Commission. By creating significant upstream storage capacity, India gains the technical ability to “turn off the tap,” exacerbating Pakistan’s vulnerability during critical planting seasons.
The unilateral suspension of the IWT is a direct challenge to the international rules-based order. While India justifies its actions as a response to security concerns, the Court of Arbitration (CoA) reaffirmed in June 2025 that the treaty remains valid and binding. The legal principle of pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept) dictates that political grievances do not grant a state the right to weaponize a shared life-sustaining resource.
In an era of intensifying climate change, the predictability of the Indus Waters Treaty is more essential than ever. The current state of abeyance has created a vacuum where data-sharing has ceased and mistrust has peaked. Ultimately, the future of the region depends on whether the Indus remains a source of life or is permanently transformed into a tool of conflict – the water weapon!
—The writer is contributing columnist, based in Islamabad.
