South Asia’s security challenge

Part - II

The writer is a retired air-vice marshal, former ambassador and a security and political analyst.

The three great mountain ranges – the Himalayas, the Karakorums and the Hindu-Kush – dwarf the Subcontinent on its south and China in its north. Approximately 35,000 sq kms of glaciers form an icecap over the three ranges but primarily on the Himalayas and the Karakorums.

The spread of these glaciers is east to west, covering a large region spawning the most populous nations on this planet – India and China with populations of over a billion each, and Pakistan and Bangladesh, the two most densely populated countries.

At the conflation of the three greatest mountain ranges, and over its expanse, lie the mouths of four large river systems with numerous tributaries – some big enough to constitute their own system – that feed these cavernous populations. The Indus, the largest of them all, roots out of Nepal; the Yangtze which later becomes the Brahmaputra in India and Bangladesh is sourced through Tibet. (It flows south and then meanders across from Assam into the north-eastern plains of India finally entering Bangladesh). The Ganges – the fourth river system that feeds northern India and its most populous stretches – and even the Indus, find their way through the northern expanses of Kashmir, adding to their mass-flow from their supporting tributaries, till they break out into the fertile plains that were once known as the granary of the world.

All through history, civilisations have grown along rivers for the obvious elixir in the fresh water supply that sustains these population centres. Dry the rivers out and these metropolises will empty out. Rivers are also the source of what is called the world’s most elaborate irrigation system that helped form the granary in the Subcontinent.

The mighty Indus and its affiliated tributaries in the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi and the Sutlej had once helped the combined Punjab feed the rest of India. The Yangtze does exactly that on the other side in China. The Brahmaputra in eastern India and Bangladesh has its own set of dependents. And this is what gave rise to the most dominant preoccupation of farming for most of these people. Even industry in these regions is based around the products that farmers produce. Urbanisation then becomes a consequence around this frenzied interdependence taxing sources and provisions that were already meagre.

And now the flip side. Imagine these rivers drying out. These people will need to sustain themselves – and yet history records that nothing saved the ultimate demise of metropolises when the waters dried out or rivers shifted course. If it was only a matter of shifting courses and the water still ran in the rivers the cities simply relocated next to the newer water courses. But when rivers dried out completely, civilisations dislocated. This gave rise to civilisational migrations or extinctions.

Were the South Asian rivers to dry up, the region would see a mass of humanity moving to seek safer climes for sustenance. That can only pose the greatest security and civilisational challenge in human history. Sadly, the South Asian civilisation is already on its way to such an end, unless a correction intervenes.

And why is that? Because Pakistan and India are counted as water scarce societies. This ignominy means that per capita availability of water has now gone below 1000 cubic meters of water per annum. This is a moment of a great crisis. It can and will only get worse. It has been caused by the exponential increase in populations while the water has been merrily let to reduce, waste and diminish. India will be around 1.6 billion people by 2050 while Pakistan will boast around 350 million. Unless a miracle happens, the two societies will face critical water shortages; and unless technology, better sense and some preservation measures are put in place, both should soon be on their way to dissolution.

When rivers are fed by glaciers and burgeoned by the rivulets and streams that receive their water through rains, it is critical to preserve these as sources. Under a changing climate the rains are fickle and their calendar stands seriously disrupted. That not only destroys nature’s ecology, it also renders populations to reverberations that feed into strife, poverty and disease. In such cases even the subsoil water recedes and is lost for both domestic and irrigation use.

There are more frequent instances of droughty summers than ever before. Chennai will get inundated with untimely rain while the crop-growing regions in Uttar Pradesh will become barren, forcing millions to internally migrate to either Bihar or Indore for work and livelihood. Villages upon villages in India are undergoing this phenomenon.

There was a time that subsoil water made up 83 percent of irrigation water. With rivers carrying waters infrequently, not only has this availability been critically reduced the water has also receded hundreds of feet lower making it unfeasible to drill it out. Almost half of the farming regions of the Subcontinent have young men seeking their fortune in the Middle East than tilling lands. The combined effect is reduced cultivability and diminishing production. In the short term, the rapidly melting glaciers meet the shortfall but we ignore the calamity we can expect in the long run.

By one estimate nearly 35 maf water flows down the Indus into the sea every year. Of this 10 maf remains the minimum required to avoid reverse flow of the sea water and desertification. With only around 8 maf storage capacity to boast of, we let around 27 maf flow into the sea. This when we are a water-scarce society. Which really means that at least 17 maf could still be harnessed, secured and gainfully used. Better water management in storage, supply and use is what we need to be looking at.

Paris may be a good start, but are we willing to give up on burning coal despite being developing economies and despite being low on per capita carbon emission? As this region burns more and more fossil fuel to achieve prosperity it heats up its own air above it and melts its glaciers faster than they would otherwise melt.

Can we work together to preserve our civilisation as a matter of regional criticality and not just in pursuance of the lofty goals set at grand conferences? Can we, for example, have a South Asian compact to secure our regions and its climate which can sustain our civilisation? Will the Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue set into motion have the space for a separate stream of dialogue seeking a consensual approach and a set of actions to help keep the water flowing in our rivers, streams and dams?

Six of South Asia’s major rivers route from the Himalayas through Kashmir, which unfortunately continues to be mauled by deforestation, new settlements and heavy military presence. Watersheds are being swept away under enormous landfalls as lands get denuded of the foliage that bound them together in the first place.

In 2014, Indian-Occupied Kashmir suffered the heaviest death toll. More of such events will occur laying to waste the ecology related to the river system. The Indus has already been blocked at Attabad due to such landfall. These are the straight consequences of an Earth that is heating up, and a changing ecology.

Rather than strategising to win Kashmir over, it would help to cooperate with each other to save Kashmir from environmental destruction. Without a preserved Kashmir the rivers that feed the Subcontinent may just change course, denying South Asia its lifeline. From confrontation it is time to move to cooperation on issues that plague our future. Rather than trying to resolve the past, it is time to secure our future.

Concluded

Email: shhzdchdhry@yahoo.com