Jerusalem: India’s decision to place the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance following last year’s April 22 Pahalgam terror attack carried out by a Pakistan-based terror group is “principled, proportionate, conditional, and reversible”. The move is not an attempt to weaponize water, but a decision to suspend cooperation with a party that has long weaponised terrorism from its territory, a report has detailed.
According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, Islamabad’s response was rhetorical from the onset, portraying the abeyance “as an act of war, branded water weaponization” given Pakistan’s heavy reliance on the Indus water system – one of the world’s largest river basins.
It highlighted that a year after the Pahalgam terror attack, Pakistan brought the issue before the United Nations Security Council, calling on India to “restore full implementation” of the treaty and warning of potential “grave humanitarian consequences”.
Although the UN Security Council bears primary responsibility for international peace and security, the report said, it is “not a treaty-interpretation body, nor a tribunal” over the performance of a 1960 bilateral instrument.
Referring to Article 26 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT), it argued that parties are obligated to implement treaties in good faith, a standard that cannot be met through selective compliance while the underlying conditions of peaceful coexistence are eroded.
India’s position, the report said, that “sustained Pakistani sponsorship of cross-border terrorism”, culminating in the Pahalgam attack, has shattered the very foundation of bilateral cooperation – which “is not a creative interpretation” but the “black-letter application of pacta sunt servanda (treaties must be performed in good faith)”.
The report noted that Pakistan must “credibly and irrevocably” renounce support for cross-border terrorism. This requirement is purposive and grounded in the customary international obligation, reinforced by Security Council Resolution – that “every state prevents the use of its territory for terrorist acts against others”.
It added that Pakistan’s claim of “weaponization” conflates the treaty’s “cooperative scaffolding with its physical entitlements”.
India, the report stressed, has not “diverted, dammed, or interdicted Pakistani waters” in violation of the provisions of the agreement but has suspended the cooperative apparatus: “data exchange, commission engagement, and treaty-level dispute mechanisms”.
Highlighting India’s principled and consistent stance while continuing the abeyance, the report said, “The path back to the treaty is open. It runs through Pakistan’s credible, irrevocable, and verifiable abandonment of cross-border terrorism through no other forum and certainly not the Security Council.”
(IANS)
