Indus Waters Treaty: One year since Operation Sindoor, how India and Pakistan have approached deadlock

Pakistan has spent the last year making efforts to build an international legal case against India on the Indus Waters Treaty, and seeking intervention of the United Nations (UN), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the World Bank, and other third-party agencies. Serving as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council (UNSC) since January last year, Pakistan has made good use of this office to repeatedly raise this issue at the UN to get international attention to the matter.

India, on the other hand, has focused its energies on completing the unfinished projects on these rivers that have long been delayed due to Pakistan’s perverse use of Treaty provisions to raise repeated objections to anything India has tried to build on its side of the rivers.

The issue has continued to simmer and is likely to escalate in a major legal or diplomatic confrontation at some point, even the cause of an armed conflict, as Pakistan has threatened. On Thursday, India’s Ministry of External Affairs reiterated its position that the IWT would continue to be held in abeyance till Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”.

Pakistan’s efforts to internationalise the issue

Being the downstream state, Pakistan is badly affected by India’s decision on the IWT. The bulk of its irrigation requirements — more than 70% — is fulfilled by the Indus river system. The waters have continued to flow, but regular meetings of the Indus Waters Commissioners of the two countries, and the data sharing mechanisms have been disrupted, injecting uncertainties in the volumes of water flowing into Pakistan. That has affected Pakistan’s abilities to plan for the usage of water and prepare for flood or drought risks.

Unable to do anything on its own to change the situation, Pakistan has been very active internationally to create pressure on India. Its core legal argument is that there is nothing in the Treaty that allows either country to keep the Treaty “in abeyance”.  There is only a dispute resolution mechanism that can be invoked.

Pakistan’s current position as a non-permanent member of the UNSC, which began last year, has come in handy. It has made multiple submissions to the Council in this regard, and has been raising this issue at every available opportunity, even during discussions on entirely unrelated subjects.

For example, the UNSC last month held deliberations on the subject of energy, critical minerals, and international security. Pakistan said natural resources must serve as instruments of economic development and shared prosperity, not coercion or conflict, then added the same principle applied to water resources as well, and went on to talk about the IWT.

Framing it as a security issue

Pakistan has been framing the Indus Waters issue as a matter that threatens regional peace and security, something that is a direct concern of the UNSC. It is also framing it as a human rights issue and has got its NGOs and proxies to petition the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). Its efforts bore some fruit when the UN Special Rapporteurs, operating under the UNHRC’s Special Procedures system, sent a communication to India seeking clarifications on its decision on the Treaty.

India, which has maintained that the Treaty was essentially a bilateral arrangement with only the World Bank — which had acted as the facilitator — being the acknowledged third party in a procedural role, ignored the communication.

A dam on the Indus river system, in Jammu and Kashmir’s Reasi. (Express Photo)

Pakistan claimed another victory when the Court of Arbitration, constituted under the IWT mechanism to resolve some disputes raised by Pakistan, ruled last year that India’s decision to hold the Treaty in abeyance did not deprive the court of its competence to proceed with matters it was already seized with. Pakistan said this was evidence that India’s decision was bad in international law.

India, of course, had objected to the very formation of this Court of Arbitration, arguing that a parallel dispute resolution mechanism, through a World Bank-appointed neutral expert, was already operational. It never participated in the proceedings of this Court of Arbitration, and has rejected its rulings.

Pakistan’s larger objective is to get the UNSC to pass a resolution, or say something, against India on this matter, or somehow get the issue referred to the ICJ. None of these things are likely to happen, but Pakistan’s effort has been to create as many documentary references of this issue in UN records as possible.

Building infrastructure, and the case

While India has countered Pakistani arguments on Indus Waters Treaty at international forums whenever it has had an opportunity, it has been primarily focused on creating the infrastructure that will allow it to make full use of the waters it is entitled to under the Treaty provisions.

The Treaty allows India to make limited, non-consumptive, use of even waters of the western rivers — Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab — which have been awarded to Pakistan. For the three eastern rivers — Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas — the IWT allows India unrestricted access and usage.

But these provisions have not been efficiently utilised by India. Its efforts to create the necessary infrastructure have always triggered objections from Pakistan, whose primary objective has been to delay these projects and raise their costs.

India has also been preparing to deal with any kind of unexpected legal or diplomatic fall-out of its decision last year. While Pahalgam was the immediate trigger, and New Delhi has maintained that it would continue to hold the IWT in abeyance, it has other reasons as well for arguing that the Treaty needs to be renegotiated or replaced.

According to India, the situation on the ground has changed substantially in the last 65 years, and the Treaty, as it exists, is unsuited for these new realities. The population on the Indian side has increased significantly, climate change has injected new uncertainties in water availability and river flows, development, and energy needs of the people of Jammu and Kashmir are now vastly different, and new technologies make some of the constraints in the provisions of the Treaty redundant. A committee of experts has been quietly working to strengthen India’s techno-legal case with new data and evidence.