What makes this India-Pakistan standoff more dangerous than past ones

The treaty parceling out the waters of the Indus River and its five great tributaries between India and Pakistan was signed 65 years ago. Three eastern rivers, and about 30 per cent of the total water, were assigned to India, and the others to Pakistan. It has long been celebrated as the most enduring compact between geopolitical rivals in modern history. But, following this week’s terrorist attack on tourists in Kashmir, the Indian government abandoned the agreement.

This is a remarkable departure from the past. The Indus Waters Treaty survived three wars — in 1965, 1971, and 1999 — as well as militarized face-offs and countless acts of cross-border terror. That it did not survive this latest outrage is an indication of how much it shocked India’s leaders. While civilians, including Hindu pilgrims, have been targets before, in recent years the most deadly militant raids in Kashmir have been on the army or the police. In 2016, an army base in the town of Uri was hit with grenades; and in 2019, a paramilitary police convoy was ambushed by a car bomb.

But this attack was on ordinary holidaymakers, many of them honeymooners and families. Worse, survivors testified that the terrorists specifically sought out non-Muslim men to kill, in an echo of the traumatic sectarian violence in India’s past. The Indian government’s immediate focus on cutting ties with the Pakistani state, which has long provided open or covert support to Islamist militancy in Kashmir, may partly be a determined effort to drown out that resonance.

One other aspect of this standoff makes it more dangerous than the past. In 2019, Pakistan’s then-Prime Minister Imran Khan promised to “engage with global leadership to expose irresponsible Indian policy in the region.” He meant the US, which has pushed for an end to past confrontations, including the 1999 conflict. For decades, there’s been a tacit assumption that America will assist, advise, or pressure as needed to encourage one or the other side back from the brink. But President Donald Trump has turned America away from global leadership, and a distant and disinterested US is unlikely to get involved. South Asia and the world are more perilous as a consequence.

Peace in the subcontinent now depends upon two strong-willed men — India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff, Gen. Asim Munir — taking the sort of risk that is rare among leaders of any sort.

Munir, who holds real power, has never appeared a paragon of good sense. But it is vital he recognizes that it’s now up to him to prevent this confrontation escalating into actual clashes. This won’t be easy, since he has his own calculations to make. The army must retain its position in Pakistan by reminding people that it is a shield against India, while containing the influence of Khan, who is now in jail. A climbdown would be politically hazardous for him.

Pakistan’s leaders, as usual, have made the wrong choice. The country’s National Security Council declared: “Any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan… will be considered as an act of war and responded with full force across the complete spectrum of national power.” They should have had the good sense to let this fraught moment pass without comment, and definitely without using the word “war.” Khan was far more restrained during the 2019 standoff — and Pakistan emerged with its pride intact.

They should, instead, have been hoping that their Indian counterparts would think that suspending the water treaty was enough of a threat. After the Uri attack in 2016, Modi authorized a special forces strike on a Pakistani military encampment; after the car bomb in 2019, he sent the Indian Air Force raiding across the border. It will take great resolve, and be a political risk, for him to avoid military action this time around. His initial statement can be read either way. Speaking in English, and therefore addressing a global audience, he may have promised a more targeted approach: “India will identify, track, and punish every terrorist, and their backers.”

Pakistan’s food supply depends upon the Indus river system, and the country regularly faces water crises. That appears to give upriver India some leverage. Devastating floods in 2022 that caused $30 billion worth of damage showed how vulnerable Pakistan’s people and economy are to the behavior of its rivers. Any hit to agriculture would further delay the economy’s slow return to normalcy.

Yet it is unclear what New Delhi’s decision to hold the water-sharing treaty “in abeyance” is actually meant to achieve. In the short term, India could perhaps inject some uncertainty into Pakistan’s water management and make life harder for its marginal farmers. But experts agree that making a real dent in Pakistan’s water supply would be a gigantic task. It would involve building new dams or barrages, since most of those that currently exist are smaller, designed to manage the flow of water instead of storing or diverting it. India has not built big dams in decades.

Even if India somehow could turn off the taps, I wonder if Modi would really choose to risk his international reputation by exacting vengeance on subsistence farmers in rural Pakistan, rather than on the military establishment that he despises.