India has so far refused to reconsider its decision to keep the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in accordance, but the fact is that it cannot quite stop the flow of rivers in Pakistan considering the current infrastructure it has, according to a report on Al Jazeera Channel site.
But experts warn that even a slight diversion or blocking can damage Pakistan if India should cope with stopping the flow of Indus Basin rivers. They warn that any such move could set the scene for a full war between two countries.
In April, India said it went out of IWT after guns killed 26 tourists in Indian illegally occupied Jammu Kashmir (IIOJK). One day later, Pakistan’s National Security Committee (NSC) rejected the “unilateral” trait that warned that “any redirection of Pakistan’s water should be treated as an act of war”.
The 85-page IWT brokered by the World Bank and signed in 1960 is different from most global water states that share water according to their total volume of currents. On the contrary, IWT shares the rivers – three eastern rivers to India and three western rivers to Pakistan.
The treaty was a “hydraulic partition” that followed political partition, Majed Akhter, senior lecturer in geography at King’s College London told Al Jazeera. “It was necessary to solve problems with the operation of an integrated irrigation system in Punjab,” he added.
However, Akhter pointed out that water sharing between the neighbors is linked to their dispute over Kashmir. “Territorial control of Kashmir means control over the waters of the Indus, which is the most important water source for the strong agricultural economies” in Pakistan and India, he added.
