The expanding hydropower projects on the Chenab River are often presented as technical, environmental, or developmental initiatives. In reality, they signal a more dangerous shift: adding water-security confrontation as another dimension to the India-Pakistan conflict.
In South Asia, where rivers sustain livelihoods. When water is unilaterally harnessed or strategically leveraged, the consequences go far beyond dams and treaties.
In 2023, during a visit to Pakistan, I raised this concern in a meeting with former Prime Minister Imran Khan. I asked him what if India escalated by using water as pressure, manipulating or restricting flows from Kashmir’s rivers? His response was telling. Pakistan’s restraint, he said, would be far beyond political. At the time, the army chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, was not prepared for any escalation with India. That reality imposed a ceiling on escalation.
That ceiling no longer exists. Pakistan’s current army chief, General Asim Munir, has adopted a far firmer posture, warning that continued unilateralism will carry consequences. The assumption that countries will indefinitely absorb strategic shocks, whether territorial or hydrological, is increasingly outdated. The margin for miscalculation is narrowing.
Water is uniquely dangerous because it strips diplomacy of flexibility. Borders can be frozen or negotiated. Water shortages cannot. When agriculture, food security, and livelihoods are threatened, political leaders rapidly lose room for manoeuvre. History shows that once water disputes are securitised, they tend to escalate rather than stabilise.
The hydropower push must need to be seen in the context of its post-2019 events. Since revoking Jammu and Kashmir’s limited autonomy, projects on rivers like the Chenab are not isolated from this strategy. They are integral to it. Control over rivers becomes control over futures.
The rivers India now seeks to harness do not originate in Delhi. They rise in Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh.
International law is clear. It does not prejudice the rights of the indigenous population to the resources. Treaties negotiated between states cannot erase this principle. Nor can their suspension legitimise unilateral extraction.
The erosion of the Indus Waters Treaty should therefore be seen not only as an India–Pakistan crisis, but as a warning to the Global South. If water-sharing agreements rooted in restraint and third-party guarantees can be hollowed out through infrastructure and fait accompli, the precedent will travel far beyond South Asia, to river basins in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
India may believe that technical compliance and diplomatic ambiguity will shield it from consequences. That belief is risky. Water is the last firewall between Kashmir and open confrontation. Breaching it removes the final illusion that this conflict can be indefinitely managed.
For Pakistan, the dilemma is stark. In 2019, restraint was possible despite provocation. In a future where water itself becomes leverage, restraint may no longer be politically or strategically sustainable. For Kashmiris, the reality is even clearer. Decisions that determine the fate of their rivers, land, and survival continue to be made without their consent.
The international community still has a narrow window to act, not through rhetoric, but through preventive diplomacy to address the larger issue as well. Water from Kashmir cannot be treated as New Delhi’s strategic asset or Pakistan’s security variable. It is first and foremost the sovereign resource of indigenous people. Ignoring that reality does not preserve peace. It only delays the reckoning.
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