The Indus Waters Treaty

2026-02-04 - 23:26

THE Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) has fallen into an unprecedented phase of jeopardy. After the false flag in Pahalgam, Kashmir, India held the treaty ‘in abeyance’. This unilateral action has propelled the extreme hydro-political tensions between the two nuclear-armed countries to a breaking point. The gravity of the situation was flagged recently as a premier global threat by the Eurasia Group in its Top Risks 2026 Report. The US-based think tank identifies the “water weapon” as a defining geopolitical risk of this year. IWT was suspended by an illegal and unilateral action by India which is a threat to regional security and international laws. Moreover, withholding of critical hydrological data marks a critical evolution in the history of rivalries. Historically, the IWT, which was brokered by the World Bank, in 1960, has been extremely resilient and survived three wars and several military standoffs. It gives India the waters of Eastern Rivers (Sutlej, Beas, Ravi), and Pakistan over 80 percent of Western Rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab). Let’s plumb the depths of history and international law to understand the crisis evidently. In international law, Unilateral Suspension of treaties are very rare. Although there are some historical grounds, including the case of China denouncing the Sino-Belgian Treaty of 1865 in the 1920s based on the principle of rebus sic stantibus or the example of the US pulling out of the 1930 International Load Lines Convention, these can be very controversial and associated with claims to sovereignty. Mutual consent to termination is highly enforced under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) (Article 54). Unilateral action is strictly reserved to the obvious reasons as a material breach by the other party (Article 60) or a fundamental change of circumstances (Article 62). In April 2025, India declared that it would freeze key treaty operations, such as data exchange and Permanent Indus Commission inspection. India considers this abeyance as a strategic bargain to renegotiate and modify its three major concerns: First, India claims that Pakistan has materially breached the IWT by pursuing parallel proceedings before Court of Arbitration (CoA) and a Neutral Expert (NE) over Indian hydroelectric projects, which therefore attempts to undermine the tiered dispute mechanisms (Articles V-IX). Second, India refers to radical, unexpected developments since 1960. These include population changes (450 million to more than 1.4 billion), soaring agricultural and clean energy pressures as well as deterioration of regional security due to cross-border terrorism. Third, India, being the upper riparian state, argues that the treaty undermines the development needs of the state. It claims that the suspension is a non-permanent action, which relies on Article 49 of the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) to urge Pakistan to curb terrorism. Pakistan regards the abeyance by India as an illegal act and argues that there is no clause in the IWT that speaks of unilateral suspension; termination under Article XII (4) and modification under Article XII (3) both should be bilaterally ratified. Now, International law has been the legal defence that Pakistan has. —To be continued. —The writer is an alumnus of QAU, MPhil scholar and a freelance columnist, based in Islamabad. (fa7263125@gmail.com)