Pakistan’s Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal has warned that India’s decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance has created a new challenge for Islamabad, saying Pakistan now faces the possibility of India using water as a weapon by withholding supplies when they are needed for crops and releasing them when they are not.
The Cabinet Committee on Security met on April 23, a day after the attack, following which India announced that the treaty would remain in abeyance. The government has described keeping the treaty in abeyance as part of the measures taken in response to the Pahalgam attack. “India’s position on the Indus Water Treaty is consistent. The IWT stands in abeyance in response to Pakistan’s continued sponsorship of cross-border terrorism.
“It’s untouchable because it is an international agreement and this time around the Indian government has unilaterally held it in abeyance and that sort of creates a new challenge that first time probably water has been weaponized in modern history and we now face this threat that you know they can use water as a weapon to deny Pakistan water when it needs for its crops and release it when we don’t need it,” he said at an Asia Society event. The issue was also raised by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on the eve of the country’s Independence Day, when he warned India against threatening Pakistan’s water supplies and said Islamabad would give a “direct response” if its access to water was jeopardised. New Delhi said the circumstances and conditions under which the treaty had been negotiated had fundamentally changed. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also defended the decision, saying that “water and blood cannot flow together”. Pakistan must credibly and irrevocably abjure its support for cross-border terrorism,” Jaiswal had said. His clarification came after a Pakistan minister issued a stark warning to India over the treaty, saying Islamabad would “cut off those hands” that he claimed sought to control the Indus water.
