Vandana Shiva, an environmental activist from India, in her book “Water Wars”, warns against commoditization and the use of water as a weapon of war. Through her book, she issues a wakeup call to initiate a global dialogue on water security, accepting it as neither a commodity nor a weapon of war, but as a basic human right and provides context for this article. Conflicts triggered on the basis of water exploitation have a canny knack of turning extremely violent. The ultimate sufferer of such conflicts is the marginalised humanity on both or multiple sides of these.
Water-based conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries mainly accounted for forced water ingestion as a tool of interrogation in the Filipino American War of 1902 and resorting to poisoning of water sources by German troops in World War I and the Palestine War of 1948.
Water wars, interstate or intrastate, can cause high-intensity or low-intensity conflicts between states and state versus non-state actors, respectively. Prehistoric water wars date back to the Stele of Vultures around 2500 BC, when two Mesopotamian city-states fought for their canal and irrigation rights. In the 3rd century BC, the Qin dynasty’s army in China diverted the Yellow River to kill more than one lac persons in its war against the state of Wei. Julius Caesar, in 51 BCE, forced the surrender of the Gauls by preventing them from accessing the water supply. The Battle of Karbala is an example from Islamic history in which water was used as a weapon of war, restricting its access to the Holy Family of Prophet Muhammad, PBUH. Water-based conflicts in the 20th and 21st centuries mainly accounted for forced water ingestion as a tool of interrogation in the Filipino-American War of 1902 and resorting to poisoning of water sources by German troops in World War I and the Palestine War of 1948. This discussion cannot be complete without the intricacies between India and Pakistan, post-independence, our main subject today. Before we do that, we circumnavigate to more incidents of such conflicts. The erstwhile USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was again an outcome of its desire to access hot waters. In 2015, ISIS seized control of dams in Iraq/Syria, manipulating water supplies to punish opponents. Ongoing war in Gaza also accounts for water supplies being cut off during heightened conflict, worsening humanitarian conditions.
History, therefore, affords us a sneak peek into the mindset at play through a bifocal perspective. One view is that water is weaponised to attack enemy civilians and weaken population centres to achieve strategic objectives like disrupting troop movements and threatening food security through flooding or creating drought-like conditions, ultimately inciting masses to panic and revolt. Another way of water exploitation is using it as a potentially untraceable weapon of mass destruction and genocide. It can be a delivery platform for mass poisoning to achieve ulterior motives.
Coming back to the subject, signs of potential interstate conflict between India and Pakistan with water access issues at the core have remained conspicuous since independence. The war of May 2025 is the latest addition. The 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT), which had survived three wars in the past, is held in abeyance post-May War, courtesy India. It governs the water distribution of the six major Indus Basin rivers between Pakistan and India, giving Pakistan the rights to the waters of the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab, and India control over the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej rivers. Reportedly, India had been considering withdrawing from the treaty since 2016. Pakistan has already forewarned India on this, declaring it an act of war. As per hydrologists, India still lacks infrastructure to control and divert the flow of rivers. Now, the fact that India has openly threatened to initiate projects on its side of the basin can result in India gaining control over waters and thus threatening the water security of Pakistan. The threat gets further reinforced with ongoing climate change, which is likely to render water a scarce resource for Pakistan. Water war looms large in the subcontinent.
Pakistan has several options if India continues to use water as a tool for coercion or a weapon for war. The spectrum ranges from diplomatic, legal, to technical and strategic responses. On the diplomatic front, it should continue to engage the World Bank, being the guarantor for compliance on IWT. Although fora like the United Nations have been rendered ineffective in the recent past, lobbying should continue there. Backdoor diplomacy through informal channels can prevent escalation while keeping communication open; its efficacy therefore, should not be ruled out. Legal options hinge foremost on going to the Permanent Court of Arbitration as provided for in the IWT, although going to the International Court of Justice is not covered in the treaty, but it can be consulted in an advisory role on violations of international treaties. Our case can be further strengthened if we successfully project India’s design as a threat to the ecosystem and the planet’s environment. Technical responses are more practical and time critical in nature, immediate measures like water-efficient projects aimed at improved lining of irrigation canals, rainwater harvesting and expansion of reservoirs/storage. We need to speed up projects like the Diamer-Bhasha dam and the Mohmand dam to store water during high flows. Our flood and drought preparedness based on data-aided satellite imagery forecasts can play a major role in adapting to reduced water availability. Last but not least, our strategic response to the threat should be largely based on forging a water alliance with our friend China. Notwithstanding, the preemptive military response option should always remain on the cards.
Water is a basic human right for us. It was for a reason that Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah termed Kashmir as our jugular vein, for sure, it is the gateway to our waterways. The water threat is therefore an existential threat to us. Pakistan’s course is watermarked; no force on this earth can alter it, and thus our waters.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at zulfiqar.shirazi @gmail.com