Khaled Ahmed
For once Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah is right. He sees no violation of the Treaty. And he has no jurisdiction over the new issue of scarcity of water because the Treaty doesn't deal with it
Pakistan may be getting ready to go to war with India, not over Kashmir, which it finds futile, but over the river water India is supposed to insist on stealing from it despite the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. Pakistan’s army chief has mentioned ‘water’ in his last challenging statement, followed by the Prime Minister, and there is a one-sided media war going on as the Indian side, still angry over the Mumbai attack, is poised to jump in, all guns blazing. One chief editor in Pakistan says Pakistan should nuke the Indian dams stealing Pakistani water – with him as human payload tied to a nuclear missile!
The world is waiting for this to happen. Water wars have been predicted by the UN, but statistics show that states continue to be sane over shared waters. The Economist wrote on May 1, 2008, ‘Researchers at Oregon State University say they have found that the world’s 263 trans-boundary rivers generate more co-operation than conflict. Over the past half-century, 400 treaties had been concluded over the use of rivers. Of the 37 incidents that involved violence, 30 occurred in the dry and bitterly contested region formed by Israel and its neighbours, where the upper end of the Jordan river was hotly disputed, and skirmished over, before Israel took control in the 1967 war’.
Alarmism of the Lower Riparian : The Economist ends by stating : ‘And some inter-state water treaties are very robust. The Indus river pact between India and Pakistan survived two wars and the deep crisis of 2002’. We may be about to prove the observation wrong. As we go for the next round of Indo-Pak talks – with the Indian army chief alleging cross-border infiltration in Kashmir – Pakistan’s lawyer Ahmer Bilal Soofi, writing in Dawn on February 20, 2010 focuses on the real issue : scarcity rather than theft of water, and recommends fresh talks to consider supplementing the 1960 Indus Water Treaty with a water regime during scarcity of water. The Treaty did not take into account the ecological change that would occur half a century later, depriving the subcontinent of rains and run-off from its mountain glaciers.
Today, water management is akin to conflict management. But India and Pakistan are busy conflict-creating: they started with Kashmir and have ended up with half a dozen more casus belli issues even as they talk peace. Water is the latest such issue. Before we as a lower riparian state raise the ante, let us consider some aspects of the developing confrontation. As a lower riparian, Pakistan is naturally alarmist. This is true of lower riparians anywhere in the world including lower riparian provinces in India and Pakistan. We don’t want water storage on our rivers in Kashmir; Sindh doesn’t want water storage on its rivers in Punjab. And Sindh is as alarmist and non-trusting vis-à-vis Punjab as Pakistan is vis-à-vis India.
Treaty good despite universal hatred of Treaty : In India everyone thinks signing the Indus Water Treaty was wrong. They know that not having a waters treaty is advantageous to the upper riparian if it is militarily strong. In Pakistan, even as Punjab and Sindh fight over waters, both sides denounce the 1960 Treaty. No one says how it would have benefited Pakistan if there was no treaty reserving certain rivers for Pakistan. In India those who hate the Treaty have a good reason for doing so : take all the water and make Pakistan suffer. One is astounded by the intensity of the warmongering in Pakistan over the waters, especially as one looks at the record of Pakistan’s past behaviour under the Treaty.
The Indus Treaty envisages three kinds of complications over waters. The first type is ‘questions’ which are resolved by the two sides through their water commissioners at the Indus Water Commission. The second is ‘differences’ for which the two sides approach the World Bank which appoints a neutral expert. The third type is ‘disputes’ which goes to a Court of Arbitration assembled by the World Bank for the purpose. Both sides fund the process; and the Court can also award costs. So far ‘questions’ have been many, but only one difference, over Baglihar Dam, which turned out to be not as grave as Pakistan had thought, which must have been chastening for our watchdog water commissioner, Jamaat Ali Shah. There has never been a ‘dispute’. It is on the basis of this record that the world thinks the Indus Treaty such a good bilateral arrangement. Have we learned anything from this record?
India allowed storage and some use of Western Rivers : Our bearded Water Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah once symbolised our lower riparian alarmism, returning from his meetings in India with his dire warnings about the male fides of Indian intent. Today he is being castigated and even insulted on TV programmes because his accumulated knowledge prevents him from crossing the line on the jurisprudence of the 1960 Treaty. Discussants fall into red-faced paroxysms when he says India is not in violation even though it is in the process of building dozens of dams over our rivers – Indus, Chenab, Jhelum – and diverting water from Kishenganga.
As stated above, an upper riparian will not enter into a water treaty unless it sees advantage in it – an advantage over the lower riparian. Although Nehru is cursed in India for having signed the Indus Treaty, the truth is that he did extract from it the advantage of using some water from our three Western Rivers for consumptive use, that is, agriculture. Annexure C of the Treaty is about India diverting certain amount of water in certain months from the Western Rivers. Then, there is no bar on the building of water storage for electricity production or any other non-consumptive use on Western Rivers (Annexure E). If anyone complains in Pakistan about India building dams and taking some water out of our rivers, he speaks out of ignorance.
Water-management is conflict-management : For once Commissioner Jamaat Ali Shah is right. He sees no violation of the Treaty. And he has no jurisdiction over the new issue of scarcity of water because the Treaty doesn’t deal with it. He can only say he doesn’t believe what the Indians are saying; and he is saying that. India and Pakistan are facing a calamity they can’t quantify and that pertains to climatic change as never seen in human memory. This calamity is the ‘third party’ against which both should unite, taking along also the other states of South Asia. But this can only happen if India and Pakistan normalise their relations and become ‘sympathetic’ rather than ‘punitive’ in their view of each other. It has been observed in the context of riparian relations that water disputes can be resolved if relations are normal, that is, allowing interpenetration of interests through free bilateral trade and investment.
As a lower riparian Pakistan has no aggressive advantage, nuclear weapons or no nuclear weapons. All advantages lie in its median status and the potential it has as a trading corridor with regional states dependent on it for the movement of their goods and for the transit of their oil and gas pipelines. As stated above, 263 trans-boundary rivers in the world have caused the riparian states to cooperate rather than go to war. Many Pakistanis believe they have the advantage of leverage over America and can go on benefiting from America despite being anti-American. One has to look at Pakistan’s record with India to see how much leverage Pakistan has seen seep away as it follows its aggressive approach. Those who denounce the Indus Treaty in India want Pakistan to go on acting like this. We must remember that the Treaty can be set aside in the case of a hostile escalation; and the world will find itself siding with India if it thinks Pakistan is in the wrong.
Shahid Javed Burki’s advice for normalisation : Pakistan’s former finance minister and ex-vice president of the World Bank, Shahid Javed Burki, anticipating the Indo-Pak ministerial talks in late February 2010, wrote in Dawn (16 Feb 2010): ‘If thinking outside the box is to be encouraged, my suggestion would be that Islamabad base the dialogue on an entirely new consideration : how to bring about greater economic integration between the two countries.
‘The objective should be to develop a stake for India in the Pakistani economy and also in its stability. This would entail a number of things including unhindered flow of trade between the two countries, encouraging the private sectors on either side of the border to invest in each other’s economy, the opening up of the border that separates the two parts of Kashmir to trade and movement of people, and grant of transit rights to each other for trade with third countries. As the experience of Europe shows, economic integration among states with a history of hostility towards one another is a good way of easing tensions. Taking that approach would constitute real thinking outside the box’.
