Pakistan should not allow political and security disputes to become a justification for departing from the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), most Pakistani participants at a policy dialogue in Washington have said. The speakers rejected India’s position that the Treaty would remain in abeyance until violence in the region ceased.
During discussions on August 28 and August 29, they argued that water-sharing arrangements should remain separate from political and security disputes and that the Treaty’s provisions should continue to govern management of the Indus river system.
The observation came during discussions on the future of the Treaty hosted by the Pakistan Embassy over two days. The participants warned against allowing political tensions to undermine an agreement that has survived wars and repeated crises between Pakistan and India, according to a Dawn report.
Despite Pakistan’s serious efforts to internationalise the issue by hosting the discussions in the US capital, it failed to involve any water or international experts. None of them attended any of its sessions and one Professor from Boston University who attended was former Vice Chancellor of Lahore University Adil Najam.
The dialogue was titled “The Indus Waters Treaty: South Asian Security at Crossroads”. Former Pakistan Ambassador to the United Nations Munir Akram said Pakistan should continue to abide by the Treaty despite current tensions, arguing that India’s decision to place it in abeyance did not alter its legal status.
“Pakistan shouldn’t depart from the letter and spirit of the Treaty,” he said. Mr Akram also argued that Pakistan needed an active diplomatic strategy in response to India’s position and should continue participating in Treaty mechanisms even if New Delhi refused to do so.
No international forum willing to take IWT as an issue
He suggested exploring the creation of an impartial international mechanism, including a possible role for the UN. He suggested that Pakistan should also consult China, which he viewed as being in a position to influence the outcome. Interestingly, the IWT is a bilateral treaty in which no third party, including the World Bank which facilitated it, has any role.
World Bank chief Ajay Singh Banga has time and again made clear public statements repudiating Pakistan’s arguments that the bank should intervene between India and Pakistan. He had made it clear that he saw no role for the bank in a bilateral issue.
The discussions in Washington repeatedly returned to the need to preserve the treaty’s legal and institutional framework. Participants remarked that the Treaty had survived wars, crises and prolonged political tensions and had helped keep water cooperation insulated from disputes.
Pakistan’s Ambassador to the US Rizwan Saeed Sheikh said Islamabad had consistently favoured dialogue, diplomacy and peaceful coexistence, pointing to its efforts to facilitate dialogue over other regional disputes. “If we can do it for others, we will do it for ourselves,” he said, referring to Pakistan’s efforts to help resolve the Iran-US dispute.
No headway possible on this topic at present
He also urged India to remain engaged with Pakistan, saying: “You cannot change neighbours, so we want to engage in constructive dialogue.”
In his concluding remarks, Mr Sheikh said the problem with the IWT was not its substance but the manner in which it was being implemented. “There is no crisis of content in the Indus Waters Treaty … there is a crisis of intent in implementation,” he said.
Adil Najam, Professor at Boston University, a former Vice Chancellor of Lahore University, said the Treaty defined the future of water cooperation in South Asia. He stressed the importance of cooperation in managing shared resources. He said climate change and increasing water stress should encourage, rather than undermine, cooperation between countries sharing water resources.
Participants also cautioned against dehumanising the other side, with one speaker noting that there were “many sensible people in India”. They argued that the two countries needed to look for practical solutions despite their political differences.
The discussions examined whether the current dispute was primarily political or legal, with legal experts stressing the importance of international law and established dispute-resolution mechanisms. Speakers also warned about the consequences of treating water as an instrument of political or military pressure.
Nuclear sabre-rattling is what experts do
A large share of Pakistan’s population and economy depend on the Indus river system, participants noted, raising concerns about the regional consequences if water were weaponised. The nuclear dimension of the dispute was also discussed, with participants cautioning against assumptions that nuclear deterrence alone would prevent escalation.
As is their wont, so-called Pakistani experts showed their tendency to bring in the nuclear weapons into discussions. As if this nuclear sabre rattling has helped them in the past, or acted as a deterrence for India whenever Pakistan has crossed red lines.
Mr Najam noted that despite the lack of trust between India and Pakistan, the Treaty had worked for decades and argued that the priority should be to prevent the existing framework from falling apart. All that he suggested was clearly the oft repeated official position of Pakistan and not words or suggestions coming from a serious western academician.
Participants also stressed the importance of restoring technical engagement, transparency and data-sharing between Pakistan and India under the Treaty’s provisions. They stressed that climate change and growing water stress place additional pressure on the region’s shared resources.
Terror against India fomented by Pakistan
None of them, however, touched the officially stated position of India asking for cessation of all terror activities from Pakistan against India. It is only after this precondition is fulfilled that any discussions regarding the Treaty’s restoration can be discussed, India had said that on April 23, 2025. while putting the Treaty in abeyance. Nothing has changed on ground to depart from its stance since then.
In her statement, PPP Vice President and parliamentary leader in the Senate Sherry Rehman urged India to ensure full compliance with the IWT. She warned that the politicisation of water and its use as a tool of diplomatic pressure threatened regional stability and undermined decades of bilateral water cooperation.
Senator Rehman said India could not unilaterally suspend, disregard or reinterpret a decades-old bilateral water management framework at will. She said any decision to withdraw from or suspend an international agreement could not be made through a unilateral declaration, but had to be undertaken in accordance with established procedures of international law. It was ironical that she made such statements knowing fully well that India has already done what it thought was the most befitting response to Pakistani behaviour.
“The Indian government’s recent actions cannot, in any manner, undermine Pakistan’s legitimate rights and interests concerning its water resources,” she said.
Tilting at the windmills is Sherry Rehman
Senator Rehman stressed that taking the legal dispute to international forums was not a compulsion for Pakistan but a lawful right available to it under the established international framework. She said India could not use its water and hydropower projects as a pretext to disregard internationally agreed principles and limitations governing the shared river system.
It is amusing that despite different Pakistani experts time and again talking about taking the legal dispute to international forums, they have failed to do so for over 16 months. The real reason behind their failure is that no international legal forum can intervene in this bilateral issue.
A couple of days ago, on Friday, Pakistan Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar warned India of “profound consequences” for regional peace and security if it sought to deprive Pakistan of waters allocated to it under the IWT. He stressed that shared waters must not be weaponised as a tool of political leverage. Addressing the virtually, Dar argued the Treaty remained valid and binding despite India’s unilateral decision to place it in “abeyance”.
Ishaq Dar colours Treaty as inviolable
He described the Treaty as more than an agreement governing water, saying it provided a legal framework for managing a vital shared resource and had served as an instrument of regional stability. Its continued relevance, he suggested, had now become a test of the sanctity of international agreements and the principle that treaty obligations could not be set aside through unilateral political decisions.
Pakistan and India concluded the IWT in 1960 after years of negotiations facilitated by the World Bank, establishing a framework for the management of the Indus Basin. “The three Eastern Rivers, the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej, were allocated to India for unrestricted use, while the waters of the three Western Rivers, the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab, were allocated for Pakistan’s unrestricted use, subject to the specific and carefully defined uses permitted to India under the Treaty,” he said.
Dar said the Treaty had replaced upstream discretion with mutually agreed rules and established the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), alongside mechanisms for dealing with questions, differences and disputes. These included government-to-government engagement, a Neutral Expert and, where required, a Court of Arbitration.
Three stepped dispute resolution mechanism
Dar did not mention that this three stepped escalation mechanism in the Treaty was abused by Pakistan when it initiated processes, in parallel, before a Neutral Expert as also a Court of Arbitration. This was the reason why India raised its voice against simultaneous parallel proceedings and asked Pakistan to start discussions on modification of the Treaty. Besides, it also boycotted the proceedings under the Court of Arbitration while it joined issues before Neutral Expert Michel Lino who visited both Kishenganga and Ratle sites, along with members of Pakistani delegation in June 2024.
Dar also highlighted the pressures created by climate change, including changing precipitation patterns, glacial retreat, floods, droughts and increasing hydrological variability, which were placing additional pressure on an already stressed system. “These realities should compel greater and stronger cooperation,” he said, calling for improved and transparent data-sharing, sustained technical engagement, greater transparency and collective efforts to strengthen climate resilience.
He said climate pressures could not be used to justify abandoning agreed legal rights and obligations, adding that the treaty’s dispute-resolution mechanisms had been created precisely to address differences between the two countries.
On Thursday, Dar discussed the IWT and the evolving regional security situation with British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband in London, the Foreign Office (FO) of Pakistan has said. In a post on X, the FO said the discussions centred on developments concerning the IWT and the security situation in the region. It shows the desperation of Pakistan which is trying every conceivable forum to internationalise a bilateral issue it has with India.
A few months ago, Dar had tried to raise the issue with a senior Canadian Minister when she visited Islamabad. The Canadian Minister had refused to say anything about the Treaty saying it was a bilateral issue Pakistan has to resolve with India.
