SUNRISE over Mount Kailash is a moment etched in stillness. There, high on the Tibetan Plateau, a stream is born. Narrow, glacial, and unhurried, it trickles from a cleft known as Singi Khamban or the Lion’s Mouth. This is the beginning of the Indus river, a flow that accumulates to become Pakistan’s lifeline. But in these early stretches, it is quiet, modest, even fragile. What it becomes — wide, roaring and mighty — is not forged in Tibet, nor even in territory held by India, but farther downstream, across a rugged land of glaciers, valleys and converging rivers.
And so, when India’s water minister recently thundered that “not a drop of water” would flow to Pakistan under the Indus Waters Treaty, it made for rhetoric and bluster as geography disagreed.
The river flows northwest from Kailash, crossing from China into Ladakh in India-held Kashmir where it threads a narrow, inhospitable gorge for roughly 270 kilometres. This stretch, carved between the Karakoram and Ladakh ranges, is as dramatic as it is inaccessible. At Turtuk, the Indus exits the occupied territory and enters Gilgit-Baltistan. There, its character begins to change — and its volume begins to grow. Substantially.
The Indian minister may wish to check the volume of water at the point the Indus crosses into Pakistan near Kargil. Here’s the reality. More than 90 per cent of the catchment area upstream of Tarbela lies within Pakistani territory. So when the Indus roars into Tarbela’s gates, it does so mostly as a river born and grown in Pakistan.
This is no hydrological accident. Pakistan’s northern regions house a vast portion of the Upper Indus Basin, home to over 13,000 glaciers, the largest concentration of ice outside the polar regions. These glaciers — in the Karakoram, Himalayas, and Hindu Kush — are what breathe life into the river. Their seasonal melt, combined with snowmelt and monsoon run-off, feeds the Indus in ways that are entirely independent of India’s control. At the same time, Ladakh offers India very little strategic opportunity. The region is dry, thinly populated, and agriculturally minimal. It lacks the infrastructure or terrain to support large-scale irrigation. Even if India wished to harness the Indus here, it has no use for the water.
What about diversion of the modest quantity of water that does flow through Indian-held territory? That remains a fantasy. The idea of transferring water from the main stem of the Indus to other rivers like the Sutlej or Beas would require tunnelling hundreds of kilometres across some of the world’s highest, most seismically active terrain — at elevations and distances that make it a near-hallucination. The gorges here are deep, the geology unstable and the roads few. Even if such a project were technically conceivable, no international financier would touch it. Not for a plan with no economic utility and an obvious potential to spark diplomatic, legal and environmental crises.
The Indian water minister’s warning was rhetoric and bluster.
What about the Jhelum and the Chenab? Unlike the Indus, these rivers do originate entirely in India-held territory. The Jhelum, originating from the Verinag Spring in Kashmir, flows into Pakistan’s Mangla Dam. Roughly half the water comes from India-held territory. The other half is also out of India’s reach. That leaves only the Chenab, which originates in Himachal Pradesh and enters Pakistan near Marala that is entirely sourced from India.
That said, this is not an area without concern. The timing of releases on these rivers — especially during the crop planting season, when Pakistan depends heavily on water — can cause short-term disruption. But even this disruption is bound by treaty, monitored by both countries, and increasingly visible to international observers and adjudicators.
Zooming out let’s look at the Indus system downstream from Tarbela — together with the Kabul, Gomal, Swat and Kurram rivers — which totals nearly 120 billion cubic metres annually, compared to the combined flows of the Jhelum and Chenab, which hover around 60 BCM.
Put another way, three quarters of Pakistan’s river water supply originates from sources that India cannot touch. And no amount of podium-thumping in New Delhi can change that.
This is no reason for Pakistan to be complacent. Vulnerabilities remain over the one-quarter of river water that flows into Pakistan. Specifically, half of Jhelum and all of Chenab. But even here, India faces legal, technical, and geopolitical constraints.
And beyond those, a final deterrent: Pakistan has made it clear that any treaty violation will carry costs — costs that will far outweigh whatever fleeting leverage India thinks it might gain. That, however, is a conversation for another day.
The writer is a business strategist.
Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2025
