Pakistan's reaction on Indus water reflects pressure created by India's strategic shift

New Delhi: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif's direct threat at the United Nations General Assembly that any attempt to “stop, impede or divert” its share of the Indus waters would be treated as an “act of war” is significant.

Beyond rhetoric, it reveals, perhaps for the first time in decades, that Pakistan is publicly acknowledging the impact of a pressure point that directly affects its national interests.

Earlier, a major blow was the 1971 war that resulted in Pakistan's military defeat with the surrender of over 90,000 troops in Dhaka, and the creation of Bangladesh. The loss was widely viewed within Pakistan as trauma and humiliation.

Now, Sharif’s statement is significant in the context of Pakistan’s not-so-covert war on its neighbour through cross-border terrorism. Since the decisive 1971 loss, Pakistan increasingly relied on asymmetric warfare rather than conventional military confrontation.

Terror groups operating from Pakistan, or supported by networks within, targeted India repeatedly. The list of major attacks is long and painful. Jammu and Kashmir witnessed decades of insurgency and terrorism beginning in the late 1980s.

The 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament brought the two nuclear-armed states to the brink of war. The 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists, killed 166 people and shocked the world. Successive Indian governments largely limited themselves to diplomatic protests, international campaigns, and defensive counterterrorism measures.

Subsequent attacks included the 2016 Pathankot airbase attack, the 2016 Uri attack on an Army brigade headquarters, the 2019 Pulwama suicide bombing that killed 40 CRPF personnel, and the 2025 Pahalgam attack that triggered a fresh deterioration in bilateral relations.

Following the Uri attack, India conducted surgical strikes across the Line of Control, specifically targeting terrorist launch pads, ending the practice of strategic restraint. An even stronger signal emerged after the 2019 Pulwama attack when India carried out airstrikes on Balakot, targeting terror infrastructure deep inside Pakistani territory.

Whether viewed from a military or political perspective, the action broke another psychological barrier by demonstrating India's willingness to strike beyond the Line of Control.

The most consequential shift came after the April 2025 Pahalgam terror attack. India launched Operation Sindoor, a major counterterror response. References to the operation now appear regularly in Pakistan's own political discourse, including Sharif's UN speech, which discussed the military confrontation that followed the Pahalgam attack.

However, it was the Indus Waters that became strategically important after the military responses. Signed in 1960 with World Bank mediation, the treaty allocated the three eastern rivers -- Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej -- for India's unrestricted use, while the three western rivers -- Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab -- were allocated primarily to Pakistan, subject to specified Indian rights and uses.

The treaty remained in effect through the wars of 1965, 1971, and 1999, as well as decades of political hostility. But following the Pahalgam attack, India placed the treaty in abeyance and stated that this position would continue until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably ended support for cross-border terrorism.

The Indus issue touches Pakistan's core economic interests, especially agriculture, supporting a large part of its irrigation, and is therefore deeply linked to food security, energy generation, and rural livelihoods.

Several analyses note Pakistan's heavy dependence on the western rivers allocated under the treaty. For decades, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has been bleeding India, while Islamabad openly, “politically and morally,” supported the violence and subversive activities, especially in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Indus question has altered that equation. It signals that India is increasingly willing to connect the broader bilateral relationship, including terrorism, with arrangements that had previously been treated as insulated from security disputes.

Thus, Sharif's latest utterances, beyond serving as a warning, are also an admission of vulnerability. Because the current situation reflects a transformation in Indian strategic thinking from rhetoric to a combination of military, economic, and resource-based pressure.

Whether this strategy will ultimately succeed in changing Pakistan's behaviour remains an open question, but Islamabad has indeed been made to realise that the costs of confrontation are no longer confined to speeches, dossiers, and diplomatic exchanges.

A firm message has been delivered, where, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “Blood and water cannot flow together”.

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