“The sacralisation of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) as a triumph of cooperation ignores its historical contingency and the fragility of its political foundations," cautions environmental historian Daniel Haines in ‘Indus Divided: India, Pakistan, and the River Basin Dispute’.

Six decades after that Cold War bargain, New Delhi has suspended the treaty and put water—South Asia’s most irreplaceable resource—squarely on the strategic chessboard. Critics moan about humanitarian optics and legal blowback; a hard-nosed Indian strategist sees long overdue leverage meeting long-running provocation.

Weaponising water is as old as siege warfare. Chinese commanders burst Yellow River dikes in 1938, drowning 800,000 civilians to stall Japan; the Dutch flooded their polders in 1672 against Louis XIV; Britain’s 1943 ‘Dambusters’ raid ruptured Germany’s Ruhr dams, killing 1,300 and crippling industry. Saddam Hussein drained Iraq’s marshes to uproot Shia Arabs, ISIS toggled Syrian reservoirs to starve rivals, and Russia’s 2023 destruction of Ukraine’s Nova Kakhovka dam displaced tens of thousands. History shows the side that controls the headwaters commands the battlefield; soft power sermons rarely alter that calculus.

The IWT granted Pakistan unrestricted use of the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab while India retained the smaller Ravi, Beas and Sutlej plus token run-of-river rights. India thus controls the Himalayan catchments yet draws barely 15 per cent of basin flow,........

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