South Asia has seen its fair share of geopolitical flashpoints, but New Delhi’s latest move may have ushered in a perilous new phase of regional brinkmanship.
On Wednesday (April 23), just a day after a deadly terrorist attack claimed 26 lives in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir, India unilaterally suspended the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) with Pakistan, a cornerstone of bilateral cooperation for over six decades.
The decision came alongside the closure of a key border crossing, the revocation of regional visa privileges for Pakistani nationals and the downgrading of diplomatic ties. What began as a tragedy at Kashmir’s Pahalgam hill station is rapidly snowballing into a geopolitical crisis — with water, not weapons, now at the center.
The militant group claiming responsibility, Kashmir Resistance, is an unfamiliar name in a region crowded with acronyms and ambiguity.
Yet, without presenting concrete evidence of external involvement, India has taken a series of retaliatory measures that target Pakistan’s economic arteries and, more alarmingly, its water lifeline.
In Islamabad, fears of escalation are already growing, according to media reports. Political insiders and national security officials worry India might again consider punitive military action — reminiscent of the Pulwama-Balakot episode in 2019, when 40 Indian paramilitary personnel were killed in a suicide attack and India responded with cross-border airstrikes.
Pakistan then retaliated with its own sorties, and for a brief, chilling moment, the region teetered on the edge of full-scale war between two nuclear powers.
In response to the Pahalgam incident, Pakistan’s government convened an emergency meeting of its National Security Committee on April 24, chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and attended by top military and civilian brass.
Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar appeared on television to denounce India’s moves as “premature and provocative,” noting that no proof of Pakistani complicity in the attack has been disclosed.
The real powder keg, however, is the Indus Waters Treaty itself.
Brokered by the World Bank in 1960, the treaty has been a rare, resilient bridge between two nuclear-armed rivals. It governs the distribution of water from the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab rivers — a system that provides nearly 80% of Pakistan’s freshwater supply.
The Indus Waters Treaty, however, is no ordinary bilateral agreement. It cannot be because it’s an instrument of international law. A strong case can be made by Pakistan that it’s in the global interest to uphold agreements reached through painstaking diplomacy.
This isn’t a diplomatic technicality; it is existential. All four of Pakistan’s provinces depend overwhelmingly on the Indus system. With limited alternative sources– most notably a handful of rivers from Afghanistan–Pakistan’s vulnerability is daily, agricultural and absolute.
The escalation is deeply troubling, not only for Pakistan but for the broader region. Water, more than any other resource, lays bare the imbalance of power between upstream and downstream states in South Asia.
India’s move to “hold the treaty in abeyance”– a legal gray zone with no real precedent – sets a disturbing template. It weaponizes a shared resource in a moment of grief and outrage, undermining both international law and regional norms.
New Delhi, for its part, has not been subtle in its long-standing dissatisfaction with the treaty. Last year, it formally issued a notice to Islamabad seeking a renegotiation of the terms — a move Pakistan promptly rejected.
This week’s unilateral “abeyance” appears to be an escalation of that frustration, if not an outright attempt to pressure Pakistan into submission. But beyond the legal posturing lies a darker calculus: economic attrition.
Analysts believe India’s broader intent is to turn the screws on Pakistan’s already fragile economy, particularly its agriculture, which remains overwhelmingly dependent on the Indus River system.
In practical terms, withholding water would require massive infrastructure on a scale that’s not currently available. Even if such projects were launched tomorrow, it would take decades and billions to realize.
Still, symbolism can be powerful. In South Asia, where memories are long and tempers short, even symbolic moves can provoke real consequences.
And for relatively smaller South Asian nations like Bangladesh and Nepal, it raises unsettling questions: If India can suspend a World Bank-backed water treaty with Pakistan overnight, what guarantees exist for others in the region?
What is now urgently needed is a collective voice from South Asia’s quieter corners – Dhaka, Colombo, Kathmandu – to remind New Delhi and Islamabad of their responsibilities to the wider South Asian region.
The subcontinent cannot afford for rivers to become instruments of revenge, nor diplomacy a casualty of fractured politics.
Muktadir Rashid is the executive editor of the Dhaka-based news portal Bangla Outlook
