Indian Water Belligerence

[ealtaf]

Indian water belligerence


Professor Khurram Shahzad


It has been a venerable and established speculation among political experts that the world's future wars will be fought over water, not oil. Where the whole world is fortunately lagging a bit behind for entering into this ill-fated era of 'hydrological warfare', it clearly seems that the subcontinent has perhaps surpassed the rest of the world with Indian courtesy. Now it has expediently forced again the region to slip into a new kind of fracas. Experts say it would be the era in which rivers, lakes and aquifers become national security assets to be fought over, or controlled through surrogate armies and client states.
At its eastern border India has started decanting the rivers irrigating the Bangladeshi plains and deltas. India devices to divert huge quantities of water from major rivers, including the Ganges and Brahmaputra, blocking that water from reaching Bangladesh where it is essential for the rice crop, upon which 80 percent of farmers depend for survival (also mark the current global rice shortage). It will also lead to the drying out of the Sunderbans and consequent destruction of all its rich biodiversity. This water aggression has left the country of rivers with no option but to seek the UN intervention and creation of international water laws to avert this catastrophe it may face in future.
Coming to West, Pakistan has become the victim of Indian hydrological warfare to arrogate its rivers. The construction of Uri Todiam Dam on River Poonch and Kishan Ganga Dam on river Neelum, two tributaries of River Jhelum are about to hit its final stage. Many other small hydel projects had also been completed while paper work has been on track for construction of five more dams; most of them are to be constructed on Pakistani rivers. The work pace on several of these projects prognosticate their completion by 2012 and at that very instant India will be in a position to close down both of these rivers. Consequently, the closure of these rivers would play havoc with Pakistan's agriculture and industry. Furthermore, the inhabitants of these areas inside Pakistan will have to spar the drinking water paucity.
India has also commenced the building of major dam at Kargil on River Indus and it has disbursed $ 200 billion for this purpose. The scenario for Pakistan gets grimmer with further construction of 12 dams on tributaries of River Indus. India was using water of Indus River through a tunnel since long, which also amounts to major water aggression. Interestingly, it has persuaded Afghanistan to originate a water reservoir on the River Kabul, another tributary river of the Indus.
Afghanistan at present utilizes just a fraction of Kabul waters to irrigate about 12,000 acres of land. It plans to construct a dam on the Kabul River and set up the Kama Hydroelectric Project to utilize 0.5 MAF water to irrigate additional 14,000 acres. In connivance with the Jewish lobby India has been maneuvering in war-ravaged Afghanistan where about known 4,000 plus technical workers have been posted in the name of reconstruction. This employs the well-established notion that it has been committing a silent strategic water offence against Pakistan not only from inside but from other neighboring countries.
The Indian water belligerence started when despite signing the 1960 Indus Water Treaty, it invited a bid for the development of a barrage namely Tulbul Navigational Project in 1985. The barrage was to be constructed on the River Jhelum, below the Wullar Lake near Sopore, 25 km north of Srinagar.
For Pakistan, the geo-strategic significance of the site lies in the fact that its protectorate endows India with the means to browbeat Pakistan. A dam on that site has the prospective to devastate the intact system of the triple canal project within Pakistan namely, the Upper Jhelum Canal, Upper Chenab Canal and the Lower Bari Doab Canal.
While India started work on the Wullar Barrage initially, Kashmiri freedom fighters launched their operations that wrecked the machinery and the under-construction dam, which led to India calling off work on the dam and was subsequently resumed at a later stage. It seems that the construction work pertaining to the Wullar Barrage has entered a decisive phase. After this, the Indian government brushed aside five main objections raised by Pakistan relating to the construction of the Baglihar Dam and commenced construction work. The construction of this controversial project violated not only the Indus Water Treaty but robbed Pakistan of its precious Chenab water. New Delhi also opposed any alteration in the design, as recommended by its neighbor.
Pakistanis believe that the height of the dam at 470 feet is disproportionate and will create a reservoir in excess of the power generation needs. The new reservoir potentially could block the flow of the river for 26-28 days during the low season (January-February). It is also contended that a drop of 7,000 cubic feet per second per day in the river's flow to Pakistan will come to pass during this period. The Baglihar Dam together with Dul Hasti and other dams can plainly diminish the flow of Chenab during the vital Rabi crop-sowing season (January and February). The dried crop could spell a disaster to Pakistan's agricultural economy. It has feared that India might also be diverting water to some canals near Akhnor in Kashmir and storing the water in the Salal Dam in Jammu.
In this series of water robberies of its own kind, next comes the Kishan Ganga project on the Neelum River. It enters Azad Kashmir from the Occupied Kashmir at a distance of about 200 kilometers east of Muzaffarabad and travels in a general westward direction. Near Muzaffarabad, the river turns sharply towards south and joins the Jhelum River. This location has been the focus of studies for past three decades for development of power potential of the Neelum River for Pakistan.
A 963 MW hydropower can be developed if the Neelum and the Jhelum rivers were interlinked by constructing a 32 kilometers long tunnel. Blueprints and technical stipulations were finalized in 1997 and Wapda selected this project in 2001 for execution under its Vision 2025. But again knowing the fact that Pakistan has been contemplating a dam on this site, India also started pursuing a plan to divert the Neelum water for its own hydropower generation.
With the apprehension that the Indian plan may ultimately reduce the Neelum water flowing into Azad Kashmir, Pakistan now intends to expedite the implementation of the Neelum-Jhelum Hydro Power (NJHP). By completing the NJHP before the Indian diversion plan, it is hoped India and the international community can be persuaded to accept Pakistan's historic right on the unexpurgated water of the Neelum as offered in the Indus Basin Water Treaty.
With all these hydro-atrocities India is double-dealing by alluring Pakistan in discussion and recommencing with the construction of these dams in tandem. India's scheme is to sway the Kashmiris that by persistently juxtaposing the building of dams in Kashmir, the Pakistani government was negating their right to progress, which is totally against facts. How can the world move towards a future of cooperation rather than conflict on water? One believes that there must be implied some rules internationally to avoid the water conflicts.
Countries must avoid unilateralism in building water reservoirs. Any major upstream alteration in a river system, or increase in use of shared groundwater, should be negotiated, not imposed as in case of Indian water aggression on its neighbors. Governments in the Subcontinent should look beyond national borders to basin-wide cooperation. Building strong river-basin institutions could provide a framework for identifying and exploiting opportunities for cooperation.
In trans-national water disputes, upstream nation is more powerful than the downstream and therefore more cavalier about taking into account downstream needs? That is exactly what the situation is in the Subcontinent. One must also realize the fact that two countries of the region are nuclear powers. And one of them is being kept water stressed by the other. This invites the attention of the keepers of the world to ponder over the situation.

Source: http://www.kmsnews.org/articles/indian-water-belligerence

 

[contra]

LOL!!! Lies and misinformation.

1. No issues with Bangladesh on water. No building of dams on Ganga or Brahmaputra.

2. The arbitrator for IWT is World Bank. And Pakistan has lost every case in the World Bank.

3. Do you know that how much money is paid to the lawyers etc. to present your case in the court of arbitration?
Why spend money pursuing a lost cause.

 

[Yasir1983]

This is an old Article Nov,2008

Pakistan and India may have entered the fifth round of composite talks to resolve old disputes in a bid to improve ties, but the two sides still remain bitterly engaged in conflicts over resources - water, for the time being, topping the agenda.
For the two nuclear-armed neighbors who have fought three wars since independence in 1947, rivers flowing to Pakistan from the Indian-administered part of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir have emerged as a recent bilateral flashpoint.
At a time of global financial crisis and food scarcity, and when its own rivers are drying up, India has announced ambitious plans to build water reservoirs on Kashmiri rivers allotted to Pakistan by a 1960 World Bank-mediated agreement known as the Indus Water Treaty. In accordance with the Treaty - sponsored by the UK, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Canada - India and Pakistan were given control of three rivers each, originating from Jammu and Kashmir.
The Treaty made a simple and straightforward attempt to let both adversaries share the available water resources by allotting the eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlej and Beas) to India and the western rivers (Jhelum, Chenab and Sindh) to Pakistan.
However, nothing between India and Pakistan is straightforward or simple.
India's construction of a 450-megawatt Baglihar hydel project on the Chenab River, which flows from Jammu and Kashmir into Pakistan, has ignited a fresh war of words. Flanked by tight security, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Jammu and Kashmir on 7 October to launch the start of the controversial project.
The 470-feet high, 317-meter wide dam, with a storage capacity of 15 billion cusecs of water, has significantly reduced water flow to agriculture-dependent Pakistan, according to Pakistani officials.
At present, Pakistan is weighing its options of filing simultaneous complaints with the World Bank and the International Court of Arbitration against India for violating the Treaty, citing unauthorized use of the Chenab River. Speaking to reporters after unsuccessful negotiations over the issue, Pakistani Water Commissioner Jamat Ali Shah said, "India is neither willing to compensate Pakistan's massive water losses nor consider bringing any change to the physical structure of the dam."
According to India's NDTV.com, when Pakistan took its complaint about the Baglihar hydel project to the World Bank in 2005, an expert from the organization appointed to the case gave India the green light, with some minor modifications to the project. The Baglihar hydel is expected to boost the power sector of Jammu and Kashmir, which suffers from severe electricity shortages.
"Being a lower riparian, Pakistan is hit hard by the water shortage with enormous loss in energy sector and agriculture-related businesses, in addition to imminent food inflation," Irfan Shahzad, a development expert and columnist for Pakistan's daily Dawn newspaper, told ISN Security Watch.
During the launch of the project in Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian prime minister said Pakistan's concerns had been addressed adequately, despite claims to the contrary by new Pakistani President Asif Zardari, who brought up the case before the UN General Assembly in New York recently.
"Pakistan would be paying a very high price for India's move to block Pakistan's water supply from the Chenab River," Zardari said, warning India "not to trade important regional objectives for short-term domestic goals."
To fill the newly constructed dam, Pakistani officials say India has consistently obstructed the Chenab's flow into their country. The Indus River System Authority, Pakistan's water distribution body, claims to have received only 19,351 cusecs on 9 October and 10,739 cusecs on 11 October from the Chenab River when it should be receiving a minimum of 55,000 cusecs.
Pakistan's top negotiator on water issues, Jamaat Ali Shah, told ISN Security Watch that Islamabad was seeking compensation for the loss of over 0.2 MAF (million acre feet) of water last month from the Ravi, Sutlej and Chenab rivers.
Shah's Indian counterpart, G Aranganathan, rejects Pakistan's assertion, instead blaming what he called "faulty" water gauges.
Punjab's irrigation secretary, Babar Hassan Bharwana, told ISN Security Watch from Lahore that there is expected to be a total loss of 321,000 MAF of water, bringing some 405 canals and 1,125 distributaries to dead levels and affecting 13 million acres of agricultural land on which rice, wheat, sugarcane and fodder crops are grown.
Pakistan is also receiving a major hit on the energy front as hydropower meets most of its household and industrial energy needs, officials say. Since early October, the biggest power generation center on the Tarbela Dam has been working at one-tenth of its capacity, allegedly owing to the reduced water flow from the Chenab River.
"We are forced to the disrupt electricity supply for 10 to 12 hours daily to manage the growing power shortage in the country," Water and Power Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf told ISN Security Watch.
The decision to allow India to proceed with the project "will most likely influence any future interpretation of the Indus Water Treaty," Pakistan's Dawn newspaper quoted Salman MA Salman, a lead counsel of the World Bank, as saying.
Water warfare
Like most of the disputes between India and Pakistan, the row over water resources is rooted in history.
On 1 April 1948, less than a year after the partition of the subcontinent and the creation of the separate states of India and Pakistan, Delhi stopped the flow of water from the canals on its side, denying water to some 5.5 percent of the sown area and almost 8 percent of the cultivated area. On 4 May 1948, India agreed to the Inter-Dominion Agreement with Pakistan, which allowed for the continuation of water supplies for irrigation purposes until the Pakistani side managed to develop alternative water resources.
Some time after this, then-Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited American expert David Lilenthal to survey the situation, but his observations, which bolstered Pakistan's arguments, failed to earn recognition from Delhi. Later, the World Bank sponsored several rounds of talks in Washington from 1952 to 1960, eventually resulting in the signing of the Indus Water Treaty.
The alarm bells again rang in 1984 when India announced plans to build the barrage on the Jhelum River at the mouth of Wullar Lake, the largest fresh water lake, near the town of Sopore in the disputed Kashmir Valley. India calls it the Tulbul Navigation Project, while Pakistan refers to it as the Wullar Barrage. Owing to Pakistani protests, India has stopped construction work on the project.
Then, in 1992, Pakistan first learned of plans for another controversial water reservoir, the Baglihar Dam on the Chenab River, which was also allotted to Pakistani by the 1960 treaty.
While the accord gave India full rights to use water from the eastern rivers by building dams and barrages, it allowed limited irrigation use of water from the western river earmarked for Pakistan. The Treaty barred India from interfering "with the water of these rivers except for domestic use and non-consumptive use, limited agriculture use and limited utilization for generation of hydro-electric power." The treaty also barred India from storing any water or constructing any storage works on the western rivers that would result in a reduced flow of water to Pakistan.
The water dispute has been on the agenda of the composite dialogue, but no progress has been made. While talks have yet to yield results, Pakistan is accusing India of attempting to use water as a geostrategic tool, former Pakistani foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmad Khan told ISN Security Watch.
A failed treaty
Neither country is satisfied with the Indus Water Treaty, and both are desperate for more water. Pakistani officials criticize it privately for being biased toward India and experts seek its renegotiation.
Indian scholar and writer PR Chari believes that "[n]egotiating an Indus Water Treaty 2 would be a huge Confidence Building Measure (CBM) as it would engage both countries in a regional economic integration process."
Dr Robert G Wirsing, a member of the faculty of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii and an expert on South Asian affairs, said in a lecture in Islamabad that the Treaty had inherent weaknesses. "The solution to water disputes is heavily tied with the fate of Jammu and Kashmir," he said.
Throughout the checkered history of Pakistan-India relations, the only accord that has withstood wars, near wars and terror attacks is the Indus Water Treaty, Senator Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the Pakistani Senate Foreign Relations Committee, pointed out, emphasizing the Treaty's significance.
"India's intransigence on Chenab is being seen as a threat to Pakistan's lifeline, and if India does not relent, the letter and spirit of the peace process plus the bonhomie with the new government in Islamabad would be undermined," he told ISN Security Watch.
Still, with the ongoing composite dialogue, greater awareness exists between the two sides – both keen to keep relations normal and avoid another war. Certainly, there are more doves in both countries than there were a decade ago, and hopefully, this revived water resource conflict can be resolved without either side drying up.

Source : http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/Current-Affairs/Security-Watch-Archive/Detail/?lng=en&id=93519

 

[Yasir1983]

I understand the indian mentality very well which I Sum up like this

"Tum karo tu Balatkar.........Hum karain tu Chamatkar.

 

[ealtaf]

This will be the biggest issue between India and Pakistan in coming years. May be both countries go on war upon these issues....

 

[canadian]

[h=2]Water Issue between Pakistan and India:[/h]May 13, 2011,



The water shortage in Pakistan has become a smoldering issue in recent days. The water in rivers has come to its lowest levels and fear of scarcity is growing. India’s water stealing policy and latterly modify in the rain cycle has made water shortage a most horrible dilemma for Pakistan in the past few months. Just a few decades ago, Pakistan was considered to have a large amount of excellence and quality water, but last year a report by World Bank declared that Pakistan is among the 17 countries that were currently facing a water scarcity, shortage.


http://www.specialpeoplecentre.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/PakIndia.jpg
Water has become the hottest issue to stir up tensions between India and Pakistan, with farmers in Pakistan’s breadbasket accusing India of reducing one of the subcontinent’s vital rivers – Chenab – to little more than a trickle. The analysis illustrates that India is stealing nearly twenty percent water from Pakistani rivers and Chenab is the most awful victim. This huge loss in water supply is causing more then ten billion US dollars loss to Pakistan’s agriculture based economy.
The crisis in the agricultural heartland of Pakistan relates to the Chenab, one of a series of watercourse that divide the Punjab. India is blocking water from the Chenab and Jhelum rivers by constructing dams like Baghlihar, Kishen Ganga, Wuller Barrage, Pakal Dul and taking other distraction, diversion measures. The Chenab combines the waters of four rivers, the Jhelum, the Sutlej, the Beas and the Ravi to form a single water system which then joins the Indus in Pakistan. Thus, significance of Chenab in the Indus river system is apparent to everybody.
India has already constructed fourteen dams on River Chenab and blocks the water of Chenab for in excess of several weeks. The large storage of water in Baglihar Dam has reduced the flow of water in Chenab during the sowing periods of August-October and April-May. It is apprehended and predicted that if India continues with the repulsive plans of stealing water, the authentic share of Pakistan – it shall place a hazardous impact on the economy of Pakistan.
Apparently, India is working on a major plan to build sixty two dams or hydroelectric units on Rivers Jhelum and Chenab to provide these rivers dry by 2014 but India’s plans to turn Pakistan’s fertile and lush green lands into barren shall eventually prove useless – imposing sprawl and plunge to its’ India’s own economy – as majority of its billion plus populous already lives far below the poverty-line.
India is taking benefit of its pressure, influence over Afghanistan’s Karzai government to construct a Kama Hydroelectric project on River Kabul by using Pakistan’s water which will have serious consequences on the water flow in River Indus.
India has been using water as a weapon against Pakistan ever since the time of partition. India also has water disputes with Bangladesh over Farraka Barrage, with Nepal over Mahakali River and also has a water dispute with China.
India’s superficial strategy to demolish Pakistan’s agrarian economy and natural circle of life has reached the frightening and alarming levels. Stealing of water is like stealing life. Pakistan is a great country with endless natural resources. Instead of waiting for a miracle to take place, Pakistan is in great need to take daring and vigorous steps to prevent India from going by such a irrational and obsessive course – before it gets too late. India should take care and respect of their neighbors(www.specialpeoplecentre.com)

 

[Unicorn]

Bla bla bla. India has a treaty called Indus water treaty and United Nation is the arbitrator of the treaty. To this day UN has never said That India is violating the treaty. Pakistan's water commissioner has never claimed that India is violating the treaty.

This letter should be forwarded to the World bank branch of the United Nation and all members on this forum should chip in for the cost of investigation by the UN. The decision of the UN is binding upon India.

Do it for Pakistan please please, since your government is not doing it.

 

[contra]

LOL!!!
You people are just weird. Look at sources from which you are posting articles.
First get a credible and unbiased source.

 

[only_truths]

When I see articles like these being repeated in these forums and have no truth, i feel sad that here is a neighbor who is bent upon keeping the hatred alive and always rewind into history rather than move forward. For any problem, the first solution starts from within, only then you will have credibility to find fault with others.