Ministers on both sides of the India–Pakistan border rarely resist the impulse to stoke public sentiment. A video clip of India’s Jal Shakti Minister, C.R. Patil, declaring that the flow of Indus waters to Pakistan could be halted entirely by June 2028, triggered sharp response from Pakistan. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned of military retaliation should New Delhi move to restrict flows, and now Climate Change Minister Musadik Malik has declared that Islamabad would “cut off those hands” seeking to control the rivers. This sudden urgency to internationalise the dispute underscores the need to revisit the complex nuances of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) that has, since its ratification in 1960, successfully prevented water wars between India and Pakistan, despite several military conflicts. Over the past decade, however, differences over water distribution and dam construction have deepened, reshaping hydro politics and accentuating the securitisation of water as a non traditional conflict issue.
Underpinning the world’s largest irrigation system, the IWT allocated the three western rivers Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab to Pakistan, and the three eastern rivers Beas, Ravi, and Sutlej to India, while granting India limited non consumptive rights.
Although mandated to meet at least once a year alternately in India and Pakistan, following the 2019 Pulwama attack, the annual meetings of IWT Commissioners became irregular. The last meeting was convened in New Delhi on May 31, 2022 reflecting the erosion of cooperative mechanisms and leaving arbitration as the treaty’s principal operative function. Pakistan had objected to 10 Indian hydropower projects, nine of them small scale (25 MW or below), including Kulan Ramwari, Kalaroos II, Tamasha Hydro, Baltikulan, Darbuk Shyok, Nummu Chilling, Kargil Hunderman, Phagla, and Mandi HEP, rejecting the data India had shared on these projects. Pakistan maintains that the 330 MW Kishanganga project on the Jhelum and the 850 MW Ratle project on the Chenab contravene treaty provisions. Crucially, Pakistan invoked Article IX of the treaty (‘the difference, or a part thereof, should be treated as a dispute’) over the 1,000 MW Pakal Dul project on the Chenab, citing concerns about its spillway and freeboard.
New Delhi agreed to review certain objections, provide additional data, and permit Pakistani experts to inspect the Kishanganga site. Its position was that commissioner level discussions had not yet matured to the threshold for international arbitration.
India and Pakistan have since pursued divergent conflict resolution mechanisms under the IWT. Pakistan invoked Article IX to bring its case before the Court of Arbitration (CoA) in The Hague, while India opted for the appointment of Neutral Experts (NE). The simultaneous activation of these processes raised the risk of contradictory outcomes, compelling the World Bank entrusted with supervisory authority under the treaty to intervene.
India boycotted the CoA proceedings, accusing Pakistan of prolonging the complaints process, even as Islamabad sought an ex parte ruling. Meanwhile, India pressed ahead with the Kishanganga project, arguing that both Kishanganga and Ratle hydropower projects are permissible under the six decade old treaty. India has reiterated its position that the NE process is the only valid mechanism at this stage, framing the matter as a “disagreement” rather than a “dispute.” Pakistan, conversely, insisted on treating the projects as treaty violations.
In 2024, India suspended all meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission, insisting instead on direct negotiations over treaty modification. The situation deteriorated further in the aftermath of the militant attack in Pahalgam on April 22, 2025, whereafter New Delhi announced it would hold the IWT in abeyance, until Pakistan ‘credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross border terrorism.’ Pakistan condemned India’s move as an “act of war" warning of severe consequences including retaliation through suspension of the 1972 Simla Agreement, which both countries have in any case infringed, rendering this threat largely meaningless. For the first time, bilateral tensions disrupted the functioning of a framework long regarded as one of the world’s most durable water sharing agreements, an accord that had previously withstood wars and recurrent crises.
On May 15, 2026, the Court of Arbitration which sided with Pakistan’s interpretation that the treaty imposes substantive limits on India’s water control capacity, issued an award on maximum pondage and noted that the treaty does not permit unilateral suspension or abeyance. India has dismissed the award, maintaining that the tribunal lacks legitimacy.
The present suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty underscores the limitations of an agreement that has remained largely unchanged since 1960. The coexistence of parallel mechanisms, arbitration and neutral expert determination, has produced a procedural impasse. Future frameworks must therefore define with precision the sequencing, priority, and coordination of dispute resolution mechanisms.
The basin’s geopolitics are further complicated by China’s role as an upstream state, investing in Pakistan’s Diamer Bhasha Dam and reinforcing strategic alignments that heighten India’s concerns over sovereignty and encirclement. This external dimension reveals a multi layered hydro hegemonic structure, where water is both a regional lifeline and a geopolitical lever.
Beyond geopolitics, the Indus River Basin faces profound structural challenges: climate induced variability, groundwater depletion, environmental degradation, rapid urbanisation, and rising populations. But the IWT framework has proven inadequate to accommodate evolving basin conditions and technological advances. Its sustainability now depends less on legal compliance than on a reconceptualisation of hydro strategy within a volatile region besieged by political instability.
The escalating contest over the IWT puts the Indus system squarely within the broader Indo–Pak conflict, where water functions as both material resource and discursive instrument of power. In a reality where both states remain on military alert, resource conflict appears inevitable. Water has become simultaneously a weapon and a defence, a means through which strategic advantage is pursued. With trust eroded and political will absent, the prospect of coordinated water management, data sharing, or new agreements grows increasingly remote.
The writer is a security and economic affairs analyst.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK.
