WASHINGTON: Setting aside the Indus Waters Treaty strikes at the “sanctity of treaties” and “confidence in international law”, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar warned on Friday, adding that the dispute has repercussions well beyond Pakistan’s bilateral relationship with India.
“If solemn treaty obligations can simply be set aside whenever political relations deteriorate, the very purpose of concluding the treaties is undermined,” he said in a virtual address to a Washington seminar on ‘The Indus Waters Treaty: South Asian Security at the Crossroads’.
Unilateral interference with the treaty, Mr Dar said, could affect not only South Asian stability but also set “a dangerous precedent for treaty relations everywhere”.
“International agreements derive their value from certainty and predictability,” he said.
Says allowing treaty obligations to lapse whenever political relations sour sets ‘dangerous precedent’
The deputy prime minister maintained that the 1960 agreement remained “valid, binding and fully operative” despite India’s unilateral decision in April 2025 to place it “in abeyance”.
“The Treaty contains no provision permitting either party to unilaterally suspend or place it in abeyance,” he said, adding that neither country could “through a unilateral political declaration, extinguish obligations solemnly undertaken under international law”.
Mr Dar said Pakistan’s position had been clear and consistent, and that treaty-based proceedings had continued despite India’s assertion of abeyance, reinforcing the principle that “unilateral action cannot displace an agreed legal framework”.
He warned that any attempt to deprive Pakistan of the waters rightfully allocated to it under the treaty “would have profound consequences for regional peace and security”, adding: “Pakistan will safeguard its legitimate rights and interests under the Treaty and international law.”
The dispute was especially serious, the deputy prime minister said, because Pakistan’s agriculture, food security, energy production, livelihoods and economic development depended heavily on the Indus river system.
“The Indus Basin is the lifeline of more than 250 million Pakistanis,” he said. “Water security for Pakistan is therefore inseparable from economic security, food security and, ultimately, national security.”
The treaty allocates the three Eastern Rivers to India and the three Western Rivers — the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab — primarily to Pakistan, subject to specified Indian uses.
Pakistan has pursued arbitration over Indian hydroelectric projects on the Western Rivers, particularly Kishenganga and Ratle, with the Court of Arbitration at The Hague continuing proceedings after earlier rulings on jurisdiction and on the treaty’s interpretation and application.
Mr Dar said recourse to the Permanent Indus Commission, a Neutral Expert or a Court of Arbitration “is not an act of confrontation”, but “the implementation of the very legal framework to which both countries agreed and are bound”.
“Pakistan has consistently sought to resolve differences through dialogue, diplomacy and the mechanisms provided under the Treaty,” he said.
The treaty had survived wars, military crises, diplomatic breakdowns and prolonged political tensions for more than six decades, Mr Dar said, because both countries understood that water on which “hundreds of millions of lives depend” was too fundamental to be subjected to fluctuations in political relations.
“Today, however, that principle faces its gravest challenge,” he said. “The answer to disagreement was therefore built into the Treaty itself: dialogue, technical engagement and lawful dispute resolution.”
Implementation, he stressed, “was never made contingent upon political convenience”.
Geography made cooperation unavoidable, he argued, noting that “States cannot alter the direction in which rivers flow”. “That is precisely why rules matter,” Mr Dar said, urging the international community to preserve treaty-based water governance in South Asia.
He also linked the dispute to climate change, saying Pakistan was already among the world’s most water-stressed countries and faced changing precipitation patterns, glacial retreat, floods, droughts and growing hydrological variability.
Those realities, he said, “should compel greater and stronger cooperation” through improved data-sharing, sustained technical engagement and greater transparency. “Adaptation cannot mean abandonment of agreed legal rights and obligations,” he added.
The deputy prime minister proposed three principles for the way forward: that the treaty be “respected and implemented in letter and spirit”; that all questions, differences and disputes be addressed through its mechanisms; and that both countries restore and strengthen “technical engagement, transparency and data-sharing”.
“These are not unreasonable demands,” Mr Dar said. “They are the requirements of an agreement solemnly concluded by two sovereign States and sustained for more than six decades.”
He concluded by urging that the Indus remain “a source of life, livelihood and civilization, not a fault line for confrontation”.
“Shared waters must never be weaponised,” he said.
Published in Dawn, August 29th, 2026
