EVERY Pakistani child learns one truth before almost any other. Our rivers are our life.

The Indus, the mighty Sindh, is not just water flowing to the sea. It is the farmer’s hope, the mother’s kitchen, the poet’s song, and the green in our fields. So when India announced in April 2025 that it would hold the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance, it did not feel to us like a diplomatic move. It felt like a hand reaching for our throat. Let me tell the story simply, with its history, so the world can judge for itself. In 1960, after nine long years of patient negotiation, India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty in Karachi. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru signed for India, President Ayub Khan for Pakistan, and the World Bank stood as broker and witness. The idea was simple and, in spirit, fair. It divided the six rivers of the Indus basin. India received the three eastern rivers, the Ravi, the Beas and the Sutlej. Pakistan received the three western rivers, the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab.

Because Pakistan sits downstream, the treaty was written to protect us from one clear fear. That India, sitting upstream, might one day choke our water in a moment of anger. For sixty five years the treaty did its quiet work. It survived three wars. It survived the darkest hours between our two nations. Around the world, experts came to call it one of the most successful water agreements in human history, two rivals sharing one river system in peace. That is the treaty India has now tried to tear.

Let me be fair about India’s stated reason. On 22 April 2025 a terrible attack in Pahalgam, in Indian administered Kashmir, killed 26 people. It was a tragedy, and Pakistan condemned the killing of innocents, for we have buried too many of our own to cheer anyone’s grief. New Delhi says it acted out of security and sorrow. But sorrow is not proof. India blamed Pakistan without........

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