Vinay Kwatra, ambassador of India to the United States, wrote an article in 'Newsweek'
:::: "Pakistan’s aggressive rhetorical incitement, casting India as a "water aggressor," betrays the truth that the water scarcity Pakistanis face today is the product of their own government's mismanagement".
****** "Of the water Pakistan receives, only about 40 percent ever reaches its farms. More than 30 percent is lost in transit, and the rest drains unused into the sea."
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"A few weeks ago, the Government of Pakistan convened a conference in Islamabad to protest India's decision to hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. At that gathering, a former foreign minister threatened war against India if Pakistan’s demands on the Indus River system go unmet," noted Kwatra.
He wrote: "Threatening war against India, to distract from its internal problems, has become a standard policy option for Islamabad".
He also says:
"The decision to hold the treaty in abeyance was announced by India, a day after Pakistani and Pakistan-trained terrorists belonging to the designated Lashkar-e-Tayyiba organization carried out a heinous attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir in India on April 22, 2025.
They murdered 26 people—25 Indian nationals and one Nepalese national—causing the largest number of civilian casualties in a terrorist attack in India since the November 26, 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
"The Indus Water Treaty was signed by India and Pakistan in 1960.
It divided the six major rivers of the Indus Basin into two groups: India received control over the three eastern rivers, which carry roughly 20 percent of the basin's water,
while Pakistan received the three western rivers, carrying roughly 80 percent. That asymmetry stifled development for decades in Indian regions that could have benefited from better water rights.
"India honored the treaty anyway. And, how did Pakistan respond?," he points out ... adding:
"By launching wars against India in 1965, 1971 and in 1999; and through decades of persistent hostility and cross-border terrorism including an attack on India’s Parliament in 2001, Mumbai terror carnage in 2008, Uri and Pathankot attacks in 2016,
the Pulwama attack in 2019 and the Pahalgam attack in 2025. Over 40,000 civilians in India have been killed in India due to Pakistan’s persistent terror campaign.
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| A view of the Indus River in Jamshoro district in Hyderabad, Pakistan (Getty image/Newsweek) |
Kwatra writes:
"When it came to adherence to the Indus Water Treaty’s processes, obstruction and bureaucratic delays have been Pakistan’s principal responses to any India-initiated projects.
One need not catalog every hydro project that India initiated within the treaty's terms only to see Pakistan bog it down in endless dispute-resolution proceedings.
"Repeated attacks on Indian project sites, including the 2012 terrorist attack on the Tulbul Navigation Project completely prevented India from exercising its rights under the treaty.
"Pakistan also consistently blocked India's initiatives to renegotiate the treaty in light of six decades of technological change, which would have let India develop its hydropower potential.
Bit by bit, Pakistan eroded India's faith that it could exercise its rights under the treaty, or hope for a better one suited to today's realities.
"It is worth remembering that the treaty's preamble declares it was concluded "in a spirit of goodwill and friendship." Pakistan spent half a century dismantling that goodwill and friendship. The abeyance merely acknowledges what Pakistan's conduct had already destroyed."
In the context of demands being made for reviving India-Pakistan talks, the former foreign secretary says:
"Those advocating talks between India and Pakistan have not taken note of the history of these talks in the past or they must believe that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is not insanity.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has clearly voiced India’s stand today, “Terror and talks cannot go together... Terror and trade cannot go together…. Water and blood cannot flow together.”
"Pakistan’s aggressive rhetorical incitement, casting India as a "water aggressor," betrays the truth that the water scarcity Pakistanis face today is the product of their own government's mismanagement. Of the water Pakistan receives, only about 40 percent ever reaches its farms.
More than 30 percent is lost in transit, and the rest drains unused into the sea.
"Given all this, the Government of Pakistan would do better to fix its dismal water productivity, than to stage conferences blaming India and issuing threats.
The habit of pinning every domestic failure on its neighbor has grown old.
"The world should say so, unequivocally. And, if Pakistan does sincerely want India’s cooperation on bilateral issues, it must first dismantle the terror infrastructure that it has built", noted India's envoy to Washington making things explicitly clear.
Newsweek -- link
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