Pakistan is troubled by India’s decision to put and keep the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in abeyance. After New Delhi decided to withhold its obligation to the treaty in the wake of the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025, Pakistan reacted by calling water a red line. Since then, Pakistan has propagated various claims to challenge India’s decision.

As a Persian proverb goes, you can say 'honey' a thousand times, but your mouth won't get sweet. In reality, Islamabad has no legal or political base to challenge India’s position. The only thing the military establishment of Pakistan can do is issue undiplomatic, toothless threats.
To garner support, Pakistan is trying to woo the international community and public support. In this regard, a one-day seminar was held in Islamabad on 30 June, where various speakers shared their views on the IWT and India’s decision to place the treaty in abeyance. Speaking at the event, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said, "We are talking about our lifeline, not a treaty."
Ironically, the Pakistani minister's statement contains a strong contradiction. Either you take the IWT as an ethical issue in which the upper riparian state has a moral obligation to let the water flow towards the lower riparian areas, or you present it as a legal issue in which the two sides reach a mutually agreed conclusion about the sharing of water and ink it as an agreement.
Unfortunately, in both cases, the rulers in Pakistan cannot force the other side to abide by either moral obligations or the legalities of the treaty if it infringes such commitments on other fronts at will. And the latter has been the practice of the military establishment in Pakistan.
Morally, it has not reciprocated to any of the generosity shown by New Delhi right from the outset, including agreeing on sharing the waters of the three Western Rivers— the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab. Right from the 1960s, New Delhi followed the agreement and never withheld or violated its commitment to the treaty.
Pakistan, on the other hand, kept raising issues with the various projects that India has undertaken on its side. When the agreed formula is 80-20, doesn’t India have the right to utilise the 20 per cent of the water as allowed by the treaty? If Pakistan has been unable to use 80 per cent of water efficiently, how is that the responsibility of the others?
The Diamer-Bhasha Dam (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan) was conceived decades ago but has not been completed due to a lack of funds and feasibility issues. One of the main issues with the dam is that despite being one of the largest dams in the country, no irrigation canal can be drawn from it due to the mountainous terrain around it. So, the ambitious project has a fundamental flaw. It needs to be kept in mind that the IWT allowed Pakistan to design the Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS)- a contiguous irrigation system that irrigates nearly 35 million acres and supports over 90 per cent of the country’s food production.
A long debate in Pakistan has been that the country has been unable to use its share of water from the IWT efficiently. The failure of the rulers of Pakistan to take into account the water scarcity issue and climate change to address the water issue in the country didn’t start with India’s decision to put the IWT treaty in abeyance. If anything, India’s decision just exposed the complicity of the rulers of Pakistan while dealing with such a grave issue.
Therefore, the generosity shown by New Delhi by remaining committed to the treaty, even at the time of wars imposed upon India by Pakistan, takes the burden off India and implicates Islamabad for its failures to take appropriate measures to store water.
Legally, Pakistan has no case. It makes no sense to keep a party chained to an agreement that has outlived its purpose or needs to accommodate the changing dynamics, including the pressing issue of climate change. In any agreement, there is always a possibility that one party may think that its interests are not served, or the circumstances or the conditions have changed, and the agreement needs a new form and shape. For example, the global South consistently keeps talking about changing the structure of the United Nations (UN) or its demands to put restrictions on carbon emissions, in which it is argued that the North bears the responsibility to cut emissions more than the global South.
More importantly, it is an agreement that means it has been negotiated and can be renegotiated. Most of the agreements go through such a process, exceptions notwithstanding. For example, the United States (US) withdrew from the important Paris Agreement in 2018, despite being the second-largest greenhouse gas emitter. On the one hand, the global South has been demanding that the developed world should lead the fight against climate change; on the other hand, the head of the second-largest emitter and the largest world economy withdrew from the Paris Agreement because of “the unfair economic burden imposed on American workers, businesses, and taxpayers by U.S. pledges made under the Agreement.”
The US is not alone in withdrawing from an international agreement; countries like Russia, Turkey, and others have withdrawn from international agreements when seen as going against their national interests. The hollow efforts by Islamabad to garner international support will turn out to be a futile exercise.
Some in Pakistan believe that after playing the role of a facilitator between Iran and the US in the recent war, Pakistan’s diplomatic clout might have risen. That is a misreading of the ground reality. The US and President Trump particularly needed an off-ramp from the Iran war; it was a miscalculated move that turned out to be costly. Given the business mind of President Trump and his transactional approach to international politics, Pakistan or no Pakistan, he would have looked for a ceasefire with Iran.
Some point towards the President Trump’s praise of Field Marshal Asim Munir. That, however, will be a mischievous reading of the situation. The world is aware of President Trump’s erratic nature. He is anything but consistent. He likes to brag about his personal relations with world leaders one moment and chastise them the next. The issue of the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is the latest case.
All in all, Pakistan’s diplomatic or international clout has not increased. These characteristics depend on domestic political stability and economic weight, and Pakistan is struggling in both. Political instability in the country has been consistent and unending, raising questions on the credibility of the present dispensation.
As far as the economy is concerned, Islamabad seems to make efforts and take decisions to please the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to continue drawing bailouts from the international financial body. There is no sign of structural reforms that would have helped to overcome the economic crisis. Such reforms are being avoided as they can affect the elite of the country. In short, the interests of the elite are preferred over the interests of the common people, who mainly bear the brunt of the failing economy.
India’s decision to put the IWT in abeyance is through and through about Pakistan’s policy to sponsor anti-India terror groups. All other charges of Islamabad against New Delhi sound hollow. The solution to the issue is simple. Pakistan must take concrete measures against anti-India terrorist groups. Normalcy on the one front and conflict on the other is no longer workable. More importantly, Islamabad does not get to decide that.