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| India-Pakistan |
| Water wars |
| 2016-09-29 |
| [DAWN] A day after urging a joint India-Pakistain war against poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and infant mortality, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi executed his latest about-turn by implicitly threatening to use water as a weapon against Pakistain -- this in a region where great swathes of humanity eke out a subsistence living and are wholly dependent on agriculture and the agrarian chain for their livelihoods. By suspending the biannual Indus water commissioners’ meeting, ordering that India expedite its hydro projects on the three western Indus system rivers designated for the exclusive use of Pakistain under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty and menacingly suggesting that "blood and water cannot flow together", Mr Modi seems once again to be pandering to his domestic need to appear tough on Pakistain, while in reality making the region less secure through his actions. The IWT has survived five and a half decades and three wars between India and Pakistain. The treaty’s durability, the two countries’ willingness to abide by its terms and the acceptance of international arbitration time and again are successes that no leader, Indian or Pak, should ever tamper with, let alone jeopardise. Indeed, until the obnoxious and thoroughly illegal demand to unilaterally scrap the treaty was made recently in certain krazed killer quarters in India, the IWT was the obvious framework within which the next generation of climatic and water issues ought to have been addressed to the mutual benefit of India and Pakistain. The reckless gamble by Mr Modi to use novel means to ostensibly put pressure on Pakistain has now introduced new uncertainties, and surely suspicions, in a region that is already water-stressed and that could be facing traumatic water-scarcity problems in the decades ahead. In trying to alarm Pakistain into taking action against gunnies as India desires, Mr Modi has unthinkingly accelerated what could become another, equally intractable dispute between the two countries. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #3 India doesnt have to abrogate the IWT. Simply using its full share will cause Pakistan much grief |
| Posted by: John Frum 2016-09-29 06:47 |
| #2 India didn't start the war. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2016-09-29 02:55 |
| #1 Look at a map and you will see India holds all the cards. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2016-09-29 01:31 |