Arshad Mahmood Awan
Water has always been the quiet nerve of South Asian geopolitics. It sustains agriculture, anchors economies, and binds the fate of hundreds of millions of people to the rivers that run through their lands. For decades, the Indus Waters Treaty stood as a rare example of two hostile neighbours honouring a legal commitment despite recurring wars, crises, and diplomatic ruptures. That architecture is now under deliberate and systematic assault. India’s actions over the Chenab-Beas Link Tunnel Project and the Salal Dam silt-flushing plan are not administrative decisions made in isolation. They are pieces of a calculated strategy, and Pakistan must recognise them as such.
The Chenab-Beas Link Tunnel Project proposes to divert approximately 1.9 million acre-feet of water annually from the Chenab basin to the Beas basin. The Chenab is a western river. Under the Indus Waters Treaty, western rivers were allocated to Pakistan for unrestricted use. India’s plan to redirect those flows into its own eastern river system is not a technical adjustment or an internal infrastructure decision. It is a direct violation of treaty commitments, and it goes further than that. It breaches the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which governs how states must honour binding international agreements. It also runs contrary to the principles enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, which requires equitable and reasonable utilisation of shared water resources and prohibits actions that cause significant harm to co-riparian states.
The Salal Dam silt-flushing plan compounds the problem considerably. The 1978 Salal Agreement placed specific constraints on how India could operate that facility. The manner in which silt is flushed from a reservoir directly affects downstream water flow, sediment distribution, and agricultural productivity. What India proposes would give it a degree of operational control over flow patterns that the treaty framework was specifically designed to prevent. Pakistan’s Foreign Office has correctly characterised this as the weaponisation of water. That description is not rhetorical excess. It is an accurate reading of what India is doing.
What makes both moves particularly alarming is not only their immediate impact but the precedent they threaten to establish. The Indus Waters Treaty has survived more than six decades of conflict and hostility between two nuclear-armed neighbours. It endured wars in 1965 and 1971. It survived Kargil. It outlasted multiple diplomatic freezes. Its durability made it one of the most frequently cited examples of how international water law could hold even in the most adversarial bilateral relationships. If India succeeds in normalising inter-basin transfers from western rivers and unilateral alterations to agreed operational parameters, the treaty ceases to function as a binding legal instrument. It becomes, in effect, a document that India observes when convenient and disregards when inconvenient. That outcome would damage not only Pakistan’s water security but the credibility of transboundary water agreements everywhere.
India’s procedural conduct reinforces what its actions already suggest. Under the treaty, India is obligated to inform Pakistan about projects affecting shared rivers, share technical data, and invite consultations before proceeding with works of consequence. None of this has happened. Islamabad has not been notified. No technical details have been shared. No consultations have been offered or scheduled. This is not an oversight born of bureaucratic inefficiency. It is a deliberate exclusion, and it reveals the intent behind the projects themselves. Governments that believe their actions are lawful do not typically hide those actions from the very party whose rights are directly affected.
The Modi administration’s use of water as a strategic instrument against Pakistan fits a recognisable pattern of economic and diplomatic pressure. Since India’s illegal and unilateral suspension of the treaty, its moves have been designed to maximise Pakistan’s vulnerability while minimising India’s exposure to formal legal accountability. Pakistan must not allow this strategy to succeed through inertia or delayed response.
Islamabad has already stated publicly that it retains all available options to protect its rights under the treaty. That statement now requires concrete follow-through. Every legal mechanism available under the Indus Waters Treaty must be activated without delay. The Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice offer formal avenues that carry genuine weight in international law. Pakistan’s case, built on documented treaty violations and India’s refusal to engage in required consultations, is legally strong. The international community, including multilateral institutions, water law bodies, and bilateral partners with leverage over New Delhi, must be systematically engaged and pressed to take a clear position.
There is an additional dimension that deserves emphasis. India’s unilateral alterations to the flows of rivers that Pakistan depends upon are not simply a bilateral dispute with legal consequences. They carry implications for regional stability and international peace. When one nuclear-armed state systematically deprives another of water resources guaranteed by treaty, the risks extend well beyond the courtroom. The international community has both interest and responsibility in ensuring that this situation does not deteriorate further.
Pakistan’s agriculture, its rural economy, and the livelihoods of tens of millions of people are directly at stake. The Indus Waters Treaty was not a favour granted to Pakistan. It was a legally binding international agreement entered into voluntarily by both states. India must be made to honour it. That will not happen through statements and appeals alone. It will require Pakistan to pursue every legal, diplomatic, and institutional avenue with precision, persistence, and urgency. The time for deliberate action is now, before India’s unilateral moves harden into established facts on the ground and the treaty becomes a dead letter in all but name.
