by Nilesh Kunwar

Warning Ignored

Due to the barbaric targeted killing of 26 unarmed tourists by Pakistan sponsored terrorists in Pahalgam, New Delhi put Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in abeyance on April 23 last year. While Islamabad declared that it considered this decision “an act of war” that would be “responded with full force across the complete spectrum of national power,” Pakistan’s self-promoted Field Marshal Asim Munir threatened to blow up any dam that India built with “ten missiles.”

However, Islamabad has no reasons to complain since it had been adequately forewarned about this eventuality. Readers may recall that just nine days after the 2016 Uri terrorist attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared that “water and blood cannot flow together.” Senior PMO officials also confirmed that consensus on any meeting of the Indus Water Commission could “only take place in an atmosphere free of terror.”

Modi had also issued directions for reviving the Tulbul Navigation Project on Jhelum River that India had genially suspended in 1987 after objections from Pakistan. From this it was abundantly clear that New Delhi had graduated from use of mere rhetoric to taking assertive action. Similarly, New Delhi’s logical argument that “Talks and terror can’t go together” was another unambiguous indication of a tectonic shift in India’s counter-terrorism strategy.

If Rawalpindi still failed to read the writing on the wall and made the humongous blunder of thinking that Pakistan could get away unscathed after the Pahalgam carnage, why blame New Delhi for doing the obvious by holding IWT in abeyance?

Blame Game

Alleging IWT suspension by New Delhi had “grave peace and security, and humanitarian consequences,” Islamabad had sought UNSC intervention seeking its restoration. In an obvious attempt to influence UNSC and attract global sympathy, it simultaneously projected a doomsday scenario by announcing that water availability in Pakistan was only sufficient to meet the country’s requirements for 90 days.

This raises a question - if the situation is as precarious as Islamabad is making it sound, why was the letter to UNSC on this issue signed by the Deputy Prime Minister and not the Prime Minister of Pakistan himself?

While there can be no two views that scarcity of water in Pakistan’s is indeed a very serious issue, but has India precipitated this crisis by holding IWT in abeyance? While Islamabad may allege so, the real reasons will surely shock the uninitiated.

Water Allocation

IWT has grouped six rivers that flow into Pakistan from India in two groups- the Western rivers (Indus Chenab, Jhelum) and the Eastern rivers (Sutlej, Beas and Ravi), with India and Pakistan enjoying exclusive water use of the Eastern and Western river groups respectively.

What appears to be a fair mathematical sub-allotment is in fact an extremely lopsided allocation since there’s a significant variation in the quantum of water flowing in these rivers. Pakistan gets nearly a whopping 80 percent of water and India a mere 20 percent but Islamabad never talks about this unfair distribution.

Another thing that Pakistan doesn’t mention is that under the IWT agreement, India contributed £62,060,000 (UK Pound Sterling) to the Indus Basin Development Fund (IBDF) while it paid only £440,000 (UK Pound Sterling).

The irony is that despite India’s significant monetary contribution, its Beas Project was not financed from IBDF, but IWT decreed that “The cost of the works in Pakistan “Will be financed out of the Indus Basin Development Fund.”

Despite the extraordinary preferential treatment meted out to Pakistan both in terms of the quantity of water allocated and financial assistance for development work under IWT, Islamabad still keeps complaining. However, what it doesn’t talk about is its own monumental failings that have led to the prevailing sorry state of affairs.

Water Wastage Culture

Former head of Pakistan’s meteorological services Dr. Qamar-uz-Zaman has highlighted that “From within its usage for agriculture Pakistan wastes two-third of its water by following archaic agricultural practices.” To make matters worse, while Pakistan can store only 10 percent of its annual river flows (as against the average worldwide storage capacity of 40 percent), its Indus basin irrigation canal system suffers a whopping 25 percent surface water transmission loss since it has not been maintained.

Lt Col Jamil Muhammad of the Pakistan army aptly sums up the situation by warning that “While Pakistan is not acutely short of water in the physical sense, neither does it have an abundance of the resource to afford the luxury of mismanaging it-especially amid its escalating water demands.”

Yet, Pakistan has taken no meaningful efforts to stop water wastage.

Official Apathy & Connivance

Despite being a semi-arid country facing severe water issues and losing significant amounts of water due to the lack of storage facilities, Pakistan hasn’t constructed any water storage reservoir on the Indus since the Tarbela dam was built in 1976.

During its 72nd Annual Session held in 2011, the Pakistan Engineering Congress had warned the authorities that if de-silting was not undertaken immediately, the gross water storage capacity of Tarbela, Mangla and Chashma reservoirs could reduce by as much as 37% by the year 2025. However, since this hasn’t happened, an equivalent of one entire dam reservoir worth of water storage capacity has been lost to sedimentation.

In its publication Contested Waters: Sub-national Scale Water Conflict in Pakistan, United States Institute of Peace has noted that “Interprovincial water allocation is a perpetual source of conflict between the water bureaucracies of the provinces. The weak have to gain the patronage of political parties or gangsters to assert their claims on water or to appropriate it from others.”

It also reveals that “At the community level, water is more an instrument of conflict than a driver of conflict-that is, it is used as a weapon in conflicts about political allegiances, family, caste, etc.” most importantly, it notes that “The state often serves as an enabler for more powerful actors, through acts of omission and commission.”

Who’s To Blame?

Islamabad is trying to peddle the narrative that India is responsible for its water woes but the ground reality is entirely different. Various organisations monitoring global water availability had predicted more than a decade ago that Pakistan would face a severe water crisis by 2025 in case the government didn’t get its act together. The fact that Pakistan hasn’t been able to augment its scanty water storage capacity of 30 days and this squarely puts Islamabad in the dock.

Despite holding IWT in abeyance, India hasn’t stopped water of the Western rivers allocated to Pakistan. Moreover, approximately 5 to 6 percent of the total water from the three eastern rivers allocated exclusively to India under IWT still flows into Pakistan due to water diversion/storage constraints in India. So, it’s amply clear that Islamabad is just crying “wolf”! Perhaps that’s why no one is taking either Pakistan’s complaint against IWT being put on hold or its self-promoted field marshal’s threat to bomb Indian dams seriously.

Post script: Before blaming others, Islamabad needs to look inward. It shouldn’t be forgotten that in November 2016, while answering a question during his Bhutan visit for SAARC summit, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister Shah Mahamood Qureshi had admitted that Pakistani authorities have a “tendency to exaggerate” and “pass the buck” on IWT related issues.

Then, saying that the average supply of water that reaches Pakistan is 104 million acre feet while the water that is consumed is 70 million acre feet, he queried, “Where is the 34 million acre feet of water going?” He went on to ask, “Is India stealing that water from you?” and then himself answered-“No, it is not.” Advising the media “not fool yourselves and do not misguide the nation,” he frankly admitted that Pakistan was facing water scarcity just because “We are mismanaging that water.”

Nilesh Kunwar is a retired Indian Army Officer who has served in Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. He is a keen ‘Kashmir-Watcher,’ and after retirement is pursuing his favourite hobby of writing for newspapers, journals and think-tanks. Views expressed above are the author's own