New Delhi, July 23 (IANS) The dispute over the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) is no longer about water; it's about whether Islamabad can separate strategic interests from performative militancy, a report has noted.
"Pakistan’s conduct is especially curious because it reveals a familiar habit in Islamabad: every crisis is treated as both existential and self-authored by India. The pattern is always the same. First comes the accusation that India is acting illegally. Then comes the declaration that any interruption of water is tantamount to war. Then comes the swaggering promise of retaliation, as if strategic credibility were created by shouting ‘we will respond’ louder than the other side can say ‘we will comply’," emphasised an India Narrative report.
Calling Pakistan’s behaviour ‘politics of permanent grievance’ and it becoming the principal export of the country, the report mentioned that Pakistan’s dependence on the Indus system is real and any disruption would hit agriculture, power generation, and day-to-day water security hard.
"That makes Islamabad’s threats even more self-defeating. The louder it talks about war, the more it advertises vulnerability. And the more it frames water as a sacred line in the sand, the more it turns a negotiable dispute into a national humiliation contest," the report stated.
India placed the IWT in abeyance following the heinous Pahalgam terror attack last year by Pakistan-backed terrorists that killed 26 innocent civilians.
"Pakistan’s leaders insist that India is 'weaponising water,' yet the more immediate weapon is rhetorical: threats of war, warnings of 'decisive response,' and allusions to national survival whenever the treaty is discussed. This is not how mature States conduct themselves when seeking international sympathy. It is how governments under pressure try to convert weakness into moral theatre," the report highlighted.
New Delhi’s position has been consistent: India has suspended the Indus Waters Treaty and kept it in abeyance until Pakistan completely stops cross-border terrorism.
"The danger, however, is that repeated sabre-rattling can eventually make escalation feel normal. When leaders speak casually about war and destruction, they lower the threshold for miscalculation. Rivers do not need this kind of rhetoric. Farmers do not need it. Nor do two nuclear-armed neighbours. What they need is discipline, which is precisely what Pakistan’s present leadership appears unable to supply," noted the report.
–IANS
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