After the flurry of activities surrounding skirmishes between India and Pakistan for three or four days (May 6/7 to May 10 ceasefire), Pakistan Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on May 12, spoke about the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). He claimed (falsely though) that India keeping the Treaty in abeyance has not impacted his country one bit. This statement is just about as true as the claims that S400 missile batteries deployed at Adampur airbase were damaged in a Pakistani missile raid!
In a manner of veiled threat, he also said that “Pakistan even does not want to consider a scenario in which the Treaty was not reinstated’’! It bears mention here that too many Pakistani leaders, and terrorists like Hafiz Saeed and Syed Salahuddin, have said in the past that “unilateral scrapping’’ of the Treaty would be considered as an “act of war”. However, the fact is that Pakistan will have to deal with a situation wherein the Treaty is not reinstated.
What next?
On April 23, within 24 hours of the Pahalgam massacre of Hindu tourists, Bharat decided to keep the IWT in “abeyance”. Pakistan has been emphasising time and again since that day that there was no provision in IWT for keeping it in abeyance unilaterally. But beyond these empty words, and other rhetorical statements regarding the options it had on the Treaty, Pakistan has failed to do anything concrete.
Legal Options
Pakistan had at one time threatened to use one or more of the three legal options it had on the Treaty. It had...
The Indian government on Wednesday blocked the X (formerly Twitter) account of China's state-run media outlet, Global Times, for spreading unverified and misleading information regarding the India...