Water Wars
The author is a practising Advocate Supreme Court and remained President, Supreme Court Bar Association of Pakistan (2015-16)
“The autarchic art of fight is to overpower a rivalry though fighting”.
-Sun Tzu
While a Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) 1960 has survived 3 vital wars and countless conflicts between India and Pakistan, a final year saw tensions expand to a indicate where a “water war” now seems unavoidable — a H2O fight that top riparian India, who controls a upsurge of all 5 rivers into Pakistan, began personification prolonged ago.
Recently, India has, in transgression of a general authorised element of pacta sunt servanda, threatened to devaluate a IWT. This is in further to a fact that India, in defilement of a IWT, has been expanding a hydroelectric appetite plan and dam constructions during an shocking rate, formulating confidence and H2O risks for Pakistan.
India’s hazard can have inauspicious effects for Pakistan. The Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources has settled that Pakistan might run dry by 2025 unless evident movement is taken. No doubt, Pakistan has to put a possess residence in sequence though India too needs to be wakeful that eventually if Pakistan’s 191 million people are faced with famine, Pakistan will hold India’s charge to be an act of war, thereby posing critical confidence concerns for India. Cutting off Pakistan’s stream flows would also entail vital flooding opposite tools of India-Occupied Kashmir and Indian Punjab.
Furthermore, if India decides to unilaterally agreement itself out of a IWT, and cut off Pakistan’s water, it sets a dangerous fashion for itself in light of a standing as reduce riparian to top riparian China. The Brahmaputra flows into a Indian state of Assam, and any coercive measures taken by India opposite Pakistan, by restraint off water, could be replicated by China in a water-dealings with India.
The fact stays that India has always attempted to control Pakistan’s government by regulating a hazard of water, mostly even regulating it as a arms of coercion. A Shiv Sina personality is reported to have said: “The skeleton India has in store for Pakistan will make them forget what happened centuries ago in Karbala.” Similar threats have recently been finished by Prime Minister Modi: “Now each dump of this H2O will be stopped…Water that belongs to India can't be authorised to go to Pakistan..” The initial try during this was finished during Partition when Lord Radcliffe altered a strange bounds of Punjab, thereby dispersal a conduct works of Madhupore and Firozpur to India. Soon after Partition, on Apr 1, 1948, India forsaken a gates of a canals carrying H2O to Pakistan, designed to impact thousands of acres of Pakistani land from north to south Punjab and trigger a state of famine. It was not until 1960, by a intervention of a World Bank, that a dual countries were means to strech agreement to settle their H2O disputes by a IWT. we trust a IWT was innate out of prerequisite for both nations and is one of a best examples in complicated tact of win-win for both parties.
India, on a part, has utilized a “exclusive rights” over a Eastern Rivers to a fullest. In fact, it has built/intends to build 24 hydropower projects: 17 on a Chenab and 7 on a Jhelum.
Meanwhile, detached from building a Mangla and Tarbela Dams, Pakistan has been incompetent to build any storage trickery of this magnitude. Kalabagh Dam, that is prepared for construction, is fibbing un-built usually given of certain vested interests within Pakistan who conflict a construction. Resultantly, Pakistan, while pang a misfortune H2O shortages, lets some-more than 38 MAF of stream H2O go to rubbish into a sea.
The stream worldview is that H2O is a tellurian asset, that no nation can be authorised to rubbish and a determined wastage by Pakistan is noticed with astonishment. India has devised a plan to use this to a advantage and is pulling a thought of Treaty II, thereby building a box that given a over-abundance waters of a Indus are being squandered by Pakistan, India should be entitled to store this H2O on a Upper Indus, Jhelum and Chenab to perform a needs.
Pakistan, in response, is still incompetent to benefaction a counterclaim to this explain by reporting definitely that it is building a Kalabagh Dam. Instead, one finds consistent statements from unbroken provincial governments in K-P, Sindh and even Balochistan reporting that Kalabagh Dam shall not be built. Even unbroken sovereign governments have been arising paradoxical statements.
India has capitalised on this infighting between a Federal and Provincial Governments and, as a counter-strategy, has in fact fuelled a debate by ancillary a anti-Kalabagh Dam run within Pakistan.
Many anti-Kalabagh Dam conferences have been hold outward Pakistan, quite in Washington, DC in 2002, and have been plainly upheld by India. In fact, a thesis of a International Sindhi Conference hold on Nov 9, 2002, in Washington, DC, was that if Kalabagh Dam is built afterwards Sindh should mutiny from Pakistan; a speakers during a forefront were Indian Sindhis.
While a expansion of Pakistan’s cultivation sector, a ability to accommodate appetite final and a ability to feed a fast augmenting race are all factors that are wholly contingent on a use of Pakistan’s H2O resources, grant in a area of H2O law in Pakistan stays probably non-existent. Therefore, a intent and purpose of a IWT is mostly misconstrued. Similarly, when settlement awards, such as a Kishenganga award, are announced, there is small bargain of what we have gained and ceded.
Stemming from this vacuum, Pakistan has not been means to effectively run opposite India’s use of H2O as a weapon. The fact is that India’s threats of violating an general agreement aver consequences, though again Pakistan’s Government has not finished any task on this.
While India has a transparent plan to continue a threats, and to run internationally that Pakistan’s H2O needs come second to India’s, we continue to be incapacitated by a possess miss of prophesy and domestic will. The disharmony surrounding Kalabagh Dam compels this author to state that hapless is a nation whose leaders can see though do not have a foresight.
While we call on a Supreme Court to do something about Panama Leaks (with some folks even going so distant as to explain that a Court should designate NAB Chairman), continue to lift paint and cry about matters like Panama Leaks, a many essential problems sojourn unresolved. Perhaps a Government of Punjab should petition a Supreme Court, underneath Article 184(1) of a Constitution, to have a Kalabagh Dam brawl between a provincial governments resolved once and for all. Such a petition can even be treated as a matter of coercion of elemental rights.
Mahathir once righteously pronounced that Pakistan is sanctified with something larger than resources of oil and bullion — a geographical location. CPEC being one example. But this will be of no relief if we can't utilize this biggest apparatus of all — water. Wallace Stegner aptly stated: “Water is a loyal resources in a dry land”. The doubt is for how prolonged will we slight a resources to a detriment?
Published in The Express Tribune, Jan 7th, 2017.
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Article source: http://tribune.com.pk/story/1286695/water-wars/