Modi madness at the third pole

India and Pakistan are at it again; exasperating a world pre-occupied with US tariffs, Ukraine and, occasionally, the Middle East. What the world cannot be indifferent to is the weaponising of water by PM Modi for his Hindutva arsenal, thereby ensuring that environmental challenges shared between Pakistan and India will become existential threats to their nations.

None of the threats is larger than the loss of glaciers in the Upper Indus Basin (UIB), deemed the ‘third pole’ of the planet as it holds the largest concentration of ice after the north and south poles. Modi’s gambit to take war to the globe’s third-largest concentration of ice is madness.

Water played no role in the Pahalgam incident. But the unprovoked water threat by Modi will bring the headwaters of the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab rivers potentially to war in perilous proximity to Upper Indus Basin glaciers. Their importance to survival of the billions of people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and China is beyond exaggeration, not least because these glaciers are likely to lose a full one-third of their ice by end of this century.

The third pole embodies the three-body problem in South Asia, first mooted by R Rajaraman. The third body circling Pakistan and India, looming over South Asia from East Asia, and exerting its own economic, diplomatic and geographical gravity is China. China is the upper riparian to India’s most important eastern rivers, including the Brahmaputra, and controls the waters that provide the livelihood to hundreds of millions of Indians.

The Upper Indus Basin’s importance to world climate is also beyond calculation. Yet, in the sober words of a recent research study, “Historically, the transboundary water crises of the region were considered localized with no imminent threat to global security, but the situation now demands a more comprehensive understanding of water resource issues in a region possessing nuclear arsenals.”

Water is Hindu-extremist India’s latest weapon in its campaign to coerce Pakistan, having failed previously with airstrikes, claims of limited ground incursions, covert assassinations, conventional war and diplomatic vitriol. Scarce surprise, therefore, that neither the blockage of trade nor downgrading of diplomatic relations drew Pakistan’s ire; the holding ‘in abeyance’ of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) did.

Modi’s folly drew a sobering response from Pakistan’s civilian and military leadership: “Any attempt to stop or divert the flow of water belonging to Pakistan as per the Indus Waters Treaty, and the usurpation of the rights of lower riparian will be considered as an Act of War and responded with full force across the complete spectrum of National Power.”

Modi’s hydro-bullying has wrecked hopes of a rapprochement. The shared threats of the Upper Indus Basin’s melting glaciers and the polluted air of the Indus plains were until recently deemed to be the optimum subject for Pak-India cooperation; 2008 and 2019 tensions notwithstanding. The latest prospect of Pak-India cooperation has dwindled, but Pak-India tensions have once again brought IIOJK to the fore.

Instead of sharing the stewardship of natural resources and finding shared solutions for future generations of South Asians, Narendra Modi has turned recidivistic towards Muslim-hate. He has fled from the joint challenges of rapidly-receding glaciers, alarming reduction in per capita water availability, groundwater overdraft, food and nutritional security, environmental pollution and upstream interventions on river systems severely affecting downstream users.

After Modi’s destruction of Saarc, only the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) remained as a guardrail of Pakistan-India cooperation. The IWT has been a touchstone of constancy across the wars of 1965 and 1971; through the tensions of Siachen and Kargil; and over the travails of IIOJK and Balochistan. Wrathful with hubris incited by its economic success and strategic alliance with the US, India has demolished the last guardrail.

Modi’s water-warmongering has burnt the residue of good will and desire for peace remaining in the Pakistani state as well as its civil society. Those who called for peace are now silent. The time for offers of talks is over. It is time to launch a robust public diplomacy campaign to expose Indian assassination campaigns in Canada, Pakistan, and the United States; support to terrorists in Balochistan and KP; the Indian Army’s ongoing atrocities in IIOJK, and the water threat to billions of South Asians. It is time to expose the Hindutva state as a terrorist state.

At the time of writing this one week after Pahalgam, India has failed to produce even a shred of credible evidence of Pakistan’s involvement. The world’s indifference to the Pahalgam incident and its aftermath has sullied India’s self-delusional salience. Hardly any country except China has counselled restraint.

The ceasefire at the Line of Control is shattered. Two nuclear-armed neighbours are drifting towards war, with no exit ramp in evidence and no mediation in sight. The best hope is Pakistan’s offer of investigation of Pahalgam by a neutral international agency. If it achieves de-escalation, Pakistan could even contemplate a joint investigation.

Amidst drums of war, hubristic India is ignoring at its peril the sound of rushing water. The ecological bonds between India and Pakistan are “more difficult to disavow than their historical ties”, writes Sunil Amrith. “Rather than weaponising water, a renewed focus on jointly managing a vital shared resource might yet broaden how both India and Pakistan think about security in the difficult days ahead.”

The writer has served as Pakistan’s minister for foreign affairs, defence, commerce, and energy.He tweets/posts @kdastgirkhan These are his personal views.