Pakistan Accused of Weaponising Indus Waters

Treaty's Dispute Redressal Mechanism

Report By Y-Trendz

New Delhi/Islamabad — More than a year after the Pahalgam terror attack pushed India to hold the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, the 1960 water-sharing accord has become the site of an

escalating legal and diplomatic battle, with Indian officials and commentators increasingly accusing Islamabad of turning the treaty's own dispute redressal architecture into an instrument of strategic obstruction rather than genuine grievance resolution.

A Pattern of Obstruction, Not Resolution

The IWT, brokered by the World Bank and signed in 1960, divides the Indus river system between the two neighbours — the Eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) going to India and the Western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) to Pakistan, subject to specified Indian uses including hydropower. To manage friction, the treaty built in a three-tier dispute mechanism: the Permanent Indus Commission for bilateral technical talks, a Neutral Expert for technical disagreements, and a Court of Arbitration for legal disputes.

Indian analysts argue that since the treaty's inception, Pakistan has systematically leaned on this machinery not to resolve disagreements but to stall Indian infrastructure. Virtually every major Indian hydropower project on the Western rivers — including Baglihar, Kishenganga, Pakal Dul and Tulbul — has faced formal Pakistani objection, technical challenge, or a push toward international arbitration, even in cases explicitly permitted under the treaty's own terms. Critics note that Pakistan has, at times, acknowledged the flood-moderation and regulatory benefits of Indian projects while simultaneously contesting them — a pattern they say reveals objections rooted less in treaty compliance than in resisting Indian development activity in Jammu and Kashmir.

The cumulative effect, by this account, has been decades of foregone irrigation and hydropower potential for India, with large tracts of Rajasthan and Punjab remaining water-stressed and Jammu and Kashmir's hydropower capacity left substantially untapped.

Rival Forums, Rival Legitimacy Claims

The dispute has now split into parallel, competing legal tracks. Pakistan initiated arbitration proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in the Hague in 2016 over the Kishenganga and Ratle hydroelectric projects, a forum India has refused to recognise, calling its constitution "illegal" under the treaty's own Annexure G provisions. India instead invoked Article XII(3) of the treaty in January 2023 and again in August 2024, seeking a formal review and modification of the IWT in light of what it called changed circumstances and Pakistan's persistent obstruction — a process Pakistan has declined to engage with.

The rift deepened sharply after the April 2025 Pahalgam attack, which India attributed to Pakistan-backed terrorists and which killed 26 civilians. New Delhi responded by placing the treaty in abeyance, suspending data-sharing, Permanent Indus Commission engagement, and treaty-level dispute mechanisms, while maintaining it has not violated the treaty's substantive water-sharing provisions.

Since then, the Hague-based tribunal has continued to issue rulings favourable to Pakistan's position — including a June 2025 supplemental award affirming its own competence, and a further award on 15 May 2026 concerning maximum permissible water storage ("pondage") at Indian run-of-river projects. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry welcomed the ruling as vindication that the treaty "remains valid and operational" and called on India to resume normal treaty functioning. India rejected the award as "null and void," reiterating that the arbitral body is illegally constituted and that a treaty resting on good faith cannot bind one party to full performance while the other is accused of sponsoring cross-border violence.

Pakistan Escalates to the UN

Pakistan has since taken the dispute beyond the treaty's own framework, raising it at the United Nations Security Council and arguing that India's suspension of the cooperative mechanisms — rather than any physical diversion of water — itself constitutes a violation with "grave humanitarian consequences." Indian commentators have countered that this is itself evidence of forum-shopping: since the treaty's own Article IX dispute process was designed for exactly this kind of disagreement, Pakistan's decision to bypass it for a political forum suggests the bilateral machinery could not deliver the outcome Islamabad wanted.

Pakistani officials, for their part, insist their approach falls squarely within legitimate treaty use. Pakistan's Commissioner for Indus Waters, Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah, has said Islamabad does not object to lawful Indian hydropower development, only to what it calls "unlawful control, excessive discretion, and opaque operations." Pakistani commentary has also pushed back directly on the "weaponisation" framing, arguing that invoking Article IX — a clause included precisely because the treaty's drafters anticipated future disputes — cannot itself be characterised as obstruction without undermining the treaty's own design.

What Comes Next

With India insisting the treaty will stay suspended until Pakistan "irrevocably abjures" support for cross-border terrorism, and Pakistan pursuing simultaneous legal, diplomatic and now multilateral avenues to restore it, the Indus Waters Treaty — once cited as one of the most durable water-sharing agreements in the world, having survived multiple wars — finds its own conflict-resolution machinery at the centre of the conflict it was designed to prevent.