By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: A Hague court ruling ordering India to strictly comply with a decades-old water-sharing treaty with Pakistan has handed Islamabad a diplomatic victory, a senior Pakistani official said Tuesday, as leaders in Islamabad issued fiery warnings against any Indian attempts to curb vital river flows amid escalating tensions.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, in a decision published on Monday, upheld Pakistan’s challenge to India’s hydropower projects on the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab rivers, which were allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. The court rejected India’s claim that it could design projects based on “ideal or best practices” engineering, ruling that India must adhere “strictly” to the treaty’s technical specifications.
Pakistan’s Attorney General Mansoor Usman described the verdict as a clear endorsement of Islamabad’s stance. “By and large, the court had accepted Pakistan’s position, especially on the design issue of the new hydropower projects,” he told Reuters on Tuesday. “I am sure it is clear now that India cannot construct any of these projects in violation of the court’s decision.”
The ruling, which Pakistan’s foreign ministry said requires India to “let flow” the waters of the three western rivers for Pakistan’s “unrestricted use,” is final and binding, the ministry noted. With 80 percent of Pakistan’s agriculture and hydropower dependent on these rivers, the decision touches a nerve in a nation long wary of India’s upstream control over their shared waters.
India’s foreign ministry offered no immediate response to the PCA’s ruling. However, an Indian official pointed to a June statement from New Delhi asserting that India does not recognise the court’s authority, signalling potential defiance.
The Indus Waters Treaty, brokered by the World Bank after years of tense negotiations, assigns the three western rivers to Pakistan and the eastern rivers, Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej, to India. Signed in 1960, the agreement has endured multiple wars between the nuclear-armed neighbours but remains a flashpoint in their fraught relations.
Tensions flared in April when India announced it was holding the treaty in abeyance following a deadly attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, that killed 26 people, an incident New Delhi attributed to Pakistan without evidence, according to Islamabad.
Pakistan condemned the move as an “act of war,” arguing that the treaty lacks any provision for unilateral suspension and citing a breach of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. A June PCA award had already ruled against India’s unilateral suspension, a decision New Delhi similarly dismissed.
Monday’s PCA “Award on Issues of General Interpretation of the IWT” reinforced that India must ensure the western rivers flow freely for Pakistan’s use, a point Pakistan’s foreign ministry underscored as critical for its water security.
The ruling triggered a wave of defiant rhetoric from Pakistani leaders, who framed the dispute as a matter of national survival. At a ceremony in Islamabad Tuesday, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif delivered a stark warning to India. “I want to tell the enemy today that if you threaten to hold our water, then keep this in mind that you cannot snatch even one drop from Pakistan,” Sharif said. “If India attempted such an act, you will be again taught such a lesson that you will be left holding your ears.”
Sharif also alluded to past military clashes, saying the country’s “air force shot down six of their jets, among which four of them were Rafales,” to underscore Pakistan’s readiness to defend its interests.
The premier’s remarks followed a similar statement on Monday by former foreign minister and Pakistan Peoples Party Chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, who called any attempt to suspend the treaty an assault on the Indus Valley civilisation.
“If war is waged, then from the land of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai we will send a message to the Modi government that we do not retreat, we do not bow down, and if you dare think about launching an attack on the Indus River, then the people of every province of Pakistan will be ready to confront you,” Bhutto-Zardari said.
The statement grew even sharper over the weekend when Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir, speaking to the Pakistani-American community in Tampa, Florida, reportedly vowed to counter any Indian moves to restrict the Indus. “We will wait for India to build a dam, and when they do so, we will destroy it,” he said. “The Indus River is not the Indians’ family property. We have no shortage of resources to undo the Indian designs to stop the river.”
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