Staring At Crisis, Pak Wrote 4 Letters To India On Indus Treaty: Sources

Pakistan has written four letters, one after another, requesting India to reconsider its decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in suspension after the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam that killed 26 tourists, sources said.

Pakistan is staring at a water crisis, and appears to be desperate, people familiar with the matter said.

Even after India launched Operation Sindoor to strike at terror infrastructure in the neighbouring country and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK), Pakistan wrote a letter on the IWT, sources said.

India has clearly said terror and trade cannot go together and blood and water also can't flow together. While the IWT was made in good faith and friendship, Pakistan acted against its spirit by promoting cross-border terrorism, sources said.

The four letters requesting India to reinstate the IWT were sent by Pakistan's Ministry of Water Resources Secretary Syed Ali Murtaza to the Jal Shakti Ministry, after which it forwarded them to the External Affairs Ministry (MEA), sources said.

Invoking its national security prerogative, India has made it clear that the treaty will remain in abeyance until Islamabad "credibly and irrevocably" ends its support for cross-border terrorism. The move was endorsed by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the top decision-making body on strategic affairs, immediately after the Pahalgam terror attack on April 22, marking the first time New Delhi hit pause on the World Bank-brokered agreement.

Pushed on the backfoot by India's decisive Operation Sindoor, Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been expressing Islamabad's willingness to engage in peace talks with India to resolve ongoing disputes between the two countries.

This was after several leading Pakistani politicians made a desperate appeal to the Shehbaz Sharif government to "defuse" the "water bomb" that is hanging over the country after India suspended the IWT.

Photo Credit: PTI

"We would die of hunger if we don't resolve the water crisis now. The Indus Basin is our lifeline as three-fourths of our water comes from outside the country, nine out of 10 people depend on the Indus water basin for their living, as much as 90 per cent of our crops rely on this water and all our power projects and dams are built on it. This is like a water bomb hanging over us and we must defuse it," Pakistan senator Syed Ali Zafar said in May.

The IWT, which was signed in 1960, governs the sharing of the waters of six rivers - Indus, Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej - between India and Pakistan.

While Pakistan has been violating the IWT by trampling its spirit of goodwill through thousands of terrorist attacks and by obstructing the updating of the infrastructure to ensure its safety, India has shown extraordinary patience and magnanimity.

"... Far-reaching fundamental changes have taken place not only in terms of escalating security concerns through cross-border terror attacks, but also growing requirements for producing clean energy, climate change, and demographic change," said India's Permanent Representative P Harish while responding to Pakistan's campaign of disinformation during an informal meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on May 24.

New Delhi had formally asked Islamabad on several occasions in the last two years to discuss modifications of the treaty, but to no avail.

"Pakistan has continued to consistently block any changes to this infrastructure, and any modifications of the provisions, which are permissible under the treaty," Mr Harish said, emphasising that while the fundamental basis of the treaty laid out in its preamble is a spirit of goodwill and friendship, Pakistan has inflicted on India three wars and thousands of terror attacks.