ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — High in the Himalayas, the Indus River flows over the Tibetan Plateau before branching into a web of tributaries that stretch through India and Pakistan and converge to empty into the Arabian Sea. For more than six decades, this river network has been divided between the two countries according to the Indus Waters Treaty, which broadly allocates three rivers each to India and Pakistan.
The treaty has survived wars and periods of tense diplomacy between these hostile neighbors. But in April, after India blamed Pakistan for an attack in which militants killed 26 people in Indian-administered Kashmir, the Indian government announced it would no longer abide by it. In doing so, it has thrown Pakistan's already-shaky water situation into deeper uncertainty.
This was one of several retaliatory measures India took after the April attack, which Pakistan denies any involvement in. It marks the first time either country suspended the World Bank-negotiated water-sharing treaty since they signed it in 1960. Now the treaty is a possible flashpoint that could disrupt fragile peace in the region again.
Since a U.S.-negotiated ceasefire went into effect in May, India has insisted the treaty will remain suspended until Pakistan stops supporting what it calls cross-border terrorism. India's Home Minister Amit Shah vowed that India will "never" restore the Indus Waters Treaty, telling an Indian newspaper, "Pakistan will be starved of water that it has been getting unjustifiably."
Pakistan in turn accuses India of "weaponizing water" and says it will consider any attempts by India to divert or cut water in abrogation of the treaty an act of war.
The two countries have yet to hold diplomatic talks about the treaty's future. In Pakistan, its continued suspension is a reminder of the real threat of water scarcity.
"Everyone is on the same page that water is the lifeline of Pakistan, and no one will allow anyone to stop it," says Aamer Hayat Bhandara, a farmer in Punjab province's Pakpattan district and member of a provincial agriculture commission.
Experts say threats to water have an outsize impact in Pakistan because so much of its agriculture is supported by the Indus and its tributaries.
"For Pakistan, it is existential," says Adil Najam, a professor of international relations and of earth and environment at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. "The red line is there not because water is some mythical thing, but because Pakistan is essentially a dry country."
Will India withhold water?
The Indus Basin irrigates around 80% of Pakistan's arid land, according to Pakistani government estimates. Agriculture supports around two-thirds of its population. Water from the Indus Basin helps replenish aquifers that provide groundwater for homes and industries in Pakistan's major cities. Rivers in the Indus system generate hydroelectric power, which accounted for 28% of the country's electricity last year.
The Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) allows India to build hydroelectric dams on the three western rivers allotted to Pakistan — the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — as long as the dams are "run-of-the-river," which means they have little or no capacity for water storage. This limits India's ability to build new dams that would withhold substantial amounts of water from Pakistan.
India has already built several dams on these rivers for hydroelectric power generation. Two projects, the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric power plants, have been a source of contention over the years, with India and Pakistan disagreeing over whether certain design elements are allowed by the treaty. Late last month, the Hague-based, treaty-mandated arbitration tribunal involved in dispute resolution said it still has jurisdiction over the ongoing Kishanganga and Ratle dispute, despite India's declaration that it is holding the treaty in abeyance. But India rejected the court's authority.
Ashok Swain, a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University in Sweden, says India's suspension of the treaty is primarily meant to send a message to Pakistan. "At present, I think it's just political showmanship," he says, adding that the likelihood of either country resorting to military action over water for the time being is low. "Pakistanis and Indians very well know that once you attack each other's dams, it will be a huge, huge catastrophe."
Swain believes both countries will return eventually to the agreement. "Given the relationship and lack of trust between these two countries, this is the best we have."
But for now, some analysts suggest, the treaty's suspension may still present an opportunity for India — which had been pushing for a greater share of water from the Indus Basin long before this year's tensions erupted — to move forward on its own terms.
"India considers the IWT unfair and heavily skewed in favour of Pakistan," Maharaj Krishan Pandit, a researcher of Himalayan ecology, conservation and sustainability and Ngee Ann Kongsi Distinguished Professor at the National University of Singapore, tells NPR via email. He says the impacts of climate change provide India with an objective reason to renegotiate the 1960 treaty.
India is one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, according to the World Bank, with extreme heat and increasingly erratic monsoon patterns making matters worse.
Pandit says India could take several actions — including some immediate ones — to retain and redistribute water within its own territory, such as using existing dams, building diversion structures or adding infrastructure to ongoing dam projects without getting Pakistan's nod.
"Given the long-term demand, it looks quite plausible that India may go ahead and execute these projects," Pandit says, adding that he isn't privy to any concrete plans to do so.
According to Reuters, the Indian government is weighing the possibility of expanding a canal on the Chenab, one of the rivers allocated to Pakistan. (India controls the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers).
Pakistan's leadership has warned against any Indian infrastructure projects that would violate the terms of the Indus treaty. Beyond this, it sees no justification for India's move to put the treaty in abeyance.
"The government of Pakistan does not recognize that this treaty has been put in abeyance because there's no provision for that," says Musadik Malik, Pakistan's climate change minister.
Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif spoke recently about plans to speed up construction on one of his country's dams, and invited provincial discussions on how to increase the country's water storage capacity after India suspended the treaty. Pakistan is also contemplating a new tax to help finance the completion of new dams.
Malik says Pakistan is ready to discuss the treaty with India but warns it will fight actions to withhold water — responding even more firmly than it did to India's military actions in May. "We're going to use diplomatic channels. And if a war [over water] is imposed on us, then we would do exactly what we did in this round, plus one."
In an interview with CNBC-TV18 in India in May, World Bank President Ajay Banga said there is no provision in the treaty to allow for its suspension and that any changes require both India and Pakistan to agree.
Pakistan's fights over water are internal as well as with India
The Indus Waters Treaty was brokered by the World Bank to address the question of water sharing, crucial to agriculture in the region — which is now home to around 1.6 billion people. The treaty includes mechanisms for dispute resolution, which both India and Pakistan have used over the years to bring up complaints over technical details and differing interpretations of the treaty's language.
In 2023, India informed Pakistan that it wanted to modify the treaty. It requested modification again in 2024, citing demographic changes and environmental challenges, according to Indian media. Pakistan has not agreed to modify the treaty.
Pakistan and India are both suffering from climate stress, and scientists say the Himalayan region where the Indus originates is warming faster than many other places in the world. This warming is leading to glacial retreat, putting additional strain on an overstretched Indus Basin. Both countries rely heavily on groundwater, the availability of which is also declining rapidly as populations grow.
Even before the latest tensions, water was already a major concern in Pakistan. Protests started late last year in the southern Sindh province over the federal government's plan to build canals on the Indus, including one to irrigate farmland in the Cholistan desert in Punjab province. The plan — part of a larger army-led corporate farming project called the Green Pakistan Initiative — was pitched as a way to make Pakistan's outdated agriculture sector more efficient.
The canal project sparked opposition, especially in Sindh province, where agricultural communities complain they don't get their fair share of water from neighboring Punjab.
"We are experiencing water shortages all the time. So if anybody is going to tell us there's going to be additional demand for water that is being created upstream, it raises eyebrows," said Mahmood Nawaz Shah, a landowning farmer who grows sugarcane, vegetables and mangoes on his 550 acres in Sindh's Tando Allahyar district.
He says the canals project is a more immediate threat to farms than the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. "That will essentially be [the] deathbed for Sindh. That's how people see it."
Pakistan's leadership denies that Sindh is denied its fair share of water. But it paused the canals project after India announced its suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty. Prime Minister Sharif said the project would resume only with consensus from the provinces.
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