The six-decade-old Indus Water Treaty, signed in 1960, was put into abeyance by India on April 23rd, 2026, after sixty-five years and exactly a day after the Pahalgam incident in Indian-occupied Kashmir. The pretext was that the attack was instigated by Pakistan. To date, India has not been able to provide any evidence of Pakistan’s involvement, nor has it been able to capture the perpetrators of the crime.

This in a region often referred to as the “most heavily militarized open-air prison”. Ironically, it was India that first committed an act of war and attacked Pakistan on 7th May 2025, innocent civilians including children were targeted and killed, Pakistan as a response inflicted a humiliating defeat on India in the skies, the land, and the sea. India called upon the US to intervene to stop the beatings.

The treaty, however, continued to be held in abeyance as an illegal act of weaponization of water by India, despite several calls from Pakistan and the international community. Pakistan exercised both political maturity and strategic restraint and acted as per international law. If I may add, the treaty is neither time, event, nor regime-specific, and its one-sided abrogation is categorized as an “act of war.”

Since the early 2000s, India has violated the treaty blatantly and has tried to force Pakistan to agree to India’s interpretation of the IWT, which includes the construction of hydro-power projects on Western rivers. In fact, India challenged the viability of the treaty and threatened to revoke it at its will several times, using orchestrated terrorist attacks as a pretext. Back in 2018, Former Prime Minister of Azad Jammu & Kashmir Raja Farooq Haider Khan disclosed that India planned to divert the........

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