Pakistan accuses India of hydro‑terrorism

Water is the new front in the India-Pakistan standoff. Not because the rivers suddenly changed course, but because the rules around them did. On May 10, Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardari accused India of “hydro-terrorism” and demanded the restoration of the Indus Waters Treaty, the 1960 pact that has governed the region’s most important river system for decades. (arabnews.com) India is holding that treaty in abeyance after the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam attack in Kashmir, which killed 26 people and which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-backed militants. Islamabad denied that charge. ### What is the treaty actually about? The Indus Waters Treaty splits the six big rivers of the Indus basin between the two countries. (indianexpress.com) Pakistan gets primary rights over the western rivers — the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab. India gets primary use of the eastern rivers — the Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej. That sounds tidy, but the real value of the treaty is that it created procedures: data sharing, technical meetings, and a way to manage disputes before they turned into crises. ### Why is Pakistan using the phrase “hydro-terrorism”? Because Pakistan wants to frame this as more than a bilateral quarrel. Zardari’s point was that water is a civilian lifeline, not just a bargaining chip. (arabnews.com) Pakistan says India’s unilateral suspension of treaty cooperation threatens regional stability and violates international obligations. Pakistani officials have also complained for months about unusual fluctuations in river flows, which matters a lot when your farm system depends heavily on predictable water releases. ### What has India actually changed? The big shift is procedural, not a literal turning-off of the rivers. The water is still flowing, but the routine machinery around it has broken down. (arabnews.com) India no longer considers itself bound, for now, by the treaty framework. That means regular meetings between Indus commissioners and normal data-sharing channels have been disrupted. India has also tied any revival of the pact to Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” ending support for cross-border terrorism. ### Why does that hurt Pakistan more? Pakistan is the downstream state. More than 70% of its irrigation needs are tied to the Indus river system. (arabnews.com) So even if India is not physically stopping the rivers, uncertainty itself is damaging. Think of it less like a faucet being shut off and more like a farmer losing the weather forecast, the reservoir schedule, and the hotline to the dam operator all at once. The crops still need timing, not just water in the abstract. ### Where does the war fit into this? This is really the aftershock of the May 2025 conflict. That four-day clash followed the Pahalgam attack and ended with a U.S.-backed ceasefire. (indianexpress.com) A year later, the shooting has stopped, but the coercion has not. India is using treaty suspension as long-term pressure. Pakistan is trying to turn the issue into a diplomatic and legal fight at the UN, the World Bank, and elsewhere. ### What about the Washington lobbying angle? It matters because it shows Pakistan was pushing hard for outside involvement during the crisis. FARA filings show Pakistan-linked representatives in Washington were doing outreach to policymakers in early May 2025, and one filing explicitly welcomed a U.S. mediating role after the ceasefire. (indianexpress.com) That undercuts later claims from Pakistan’s military leadership that India was the side seeking mediation first. ### So what happens next? The catch is that neither side is talking like this is a technical dispute anymore. Pakistan is calling it existential. India is linking water cooperation to terrorism. (arabnews.com) Once a river treaty becomes part of deterrence politics, climbing back to engineer-level problem solving gets much harder. ### Bottom line? This is no longer just a fight over canals and river gauges. It is a fight over whether a 1960 water-sharing pact can survive a 2025 war — and right now, both sides are treating water as leverage, not shared infrastructure. (arabnews.com) (efile.fara.gov)