ON 31 August 2026, a Court of Arbitration constituted under the Indus Waters Treaty and administered by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague issued its Award on the Status of the Indus Waters Treaty, holding that the 1960 Treaty remains in force and that India must continue to perform its obligations. New Delhi rejected the award the same day, describing the tribunal as “illegally constituted” and declaring that its pronouncements would have no effect on India’s sovereign decisions. This is not a dispute over a treaty clause; it is a deliberate attempt to replace treaty law with a vocabulary of India’s own making, and that vocabulary has a name: abeyance.

Lawfare, as popularised by Major General Charles Dunlap, describes the use or misuse of law as a substitute for conventional instruments of power to achieve strategic ends. Its most effective form is not open defiance but the manufacture of legal-sounding categories that blur what is permitted. India’s announcement, a day after the Pahalgam attack, that it would hold the Treaty “in abeyance” fits that pattern precisely. The word sounds measured, temporary and procedural. In law, it is none of these things. The Treaty leaves no room for doubt. Article XII(4) provides that its provisions continue in force until terminated by a duly ratified treaty concluded between the two governments. There is no unilateral withdrawal clause, no suspension clause and no security exception.........

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