Impending Water Wars: Increasing Demand Poses Major Threat to Indus Water Treaty

By Jehangir Khattak

The landmark Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan is coming under increasing pressure because of Pakistan's increasing thirst for water and India's construction of new hydropower projects on the  rivers flowing into Pakistan, says a new report released by the Atlantic Council. 

Signed on September 19, 1960, the Treaty has served as a shining example of conflict resolution between the South Asian rivals for over 50 years. The Treaty allocated three western rivers (the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab) to Pakistan, with some water apportioned to India, and offered India exclusive rights to the three eastern rivers (Ravi, Sutlej, and Beas). India’s rights to develop hydropower schemes on the western rivers are articulated in the Treaty. The Indus Basin Irrigation System (IBIS) is the largest infrastructural enterprise, accounting for US $300 billion of investment and contributing US $18 billion (over 21 percent) to Pakistan’s GDP during 2009–10.

The report has been authored by Shahid Ahmad, the chief scientist at the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC). He says the rising demand for water has put the Treaty under strain and it may be threatened in the next decade because it does not resolve the core issue of sharing water resources during dry periods (October to March)—a period where water flows are almost half those of wet periods (April to September). "This includes the total impact of storage from the flows of the Chenab into Pakistan, and the Wullar Barrage and Kishanganga Project on the Jhelum and Neelum rivers."

The report says Pakistan must seriously consider better ways to ensure adequate water supplies for its country, with better storage facilities within its borders. Storage from the Mangla and Tarbela dams provides the main source of water for the winter season when water is scarce. Although the Kalabagh Dam could not be constructed, consensus allowed for the construction of the Bhasha and Akhori dams, with the prospect of increasing the amount of available water supplies during dry seasons.

Pakistan has a poor resource governance. More than 90 percent of the country's water resources are used for agriculture, yet the country's farming sector is ravaged by water wastage. Flood irrigation is used much more than water-saving drip irrigation, while sugar and wheat -- some of the world's most water-intensive crops -- dominate Pakistan's agriculture mix.

The report recommends that the provinces should be allowed to market their unutilized share of water allocated to them under the 1991 Water Apportionment Accord. "Additional protocols to the Accord may be added that will allow each province to use their water entitlements as needed; any excess can then be auctioned to other provinces or private operators."

It also calls for investment in the proper infrastructure to deal with floods and similar natural disasters. It also recommends  redefinition of the Water Apportionment Accord’s entitlements in terms of the existing conditions, not only based on future conditions that depend on non-existent infrastructure. "The entitlements per province were originally based on the assumption that future storage needs would be met. Both the scenarios. with and without additional storage, have to be defined in the Accord while allocating water to the provinces."

The report, says the projected per capita water availability in the Indus-Pakistan will reduce to 761 cubic meters (m3) by 2025, which will classify it as a severely water-scarce sub-basin. However,

the Indus-India will have per capita water availability of more than 1,000 m3 even beyond 2050. "The potential for Pakistan to increase its water-storage capacity is evident. The per capita water storage capacity available in Pakistan is 144 m3 per person, slightly higher than that of Ethiopia, which has less water resources but comparable water storage. In another perspective, the Colorado River provides flows of up to 900 days, while storage from the Indus Basin in Pakistan is sufficient only for flows of 30 days.

This scary scenario could further complicate the security environment in one of the most militarized regions of the world. Little wonder Pakistan-India tensions will go beyond their precarious broder disputes, which makes the possibilities more dangerous. The two nations may or may not live without Kashmir or Siachin, but none can certainly live without water.

There is not much in Shahid Ahmad's report on the need, potential and urgency for building new water reservoirs and improving water infrastructure, especially protecting against the ravages of flood. Pakistan could delay if not minimize its impending water shortage by improving its water infrastructure and building new water reservoirs, especially small dams, enacting new laws at the federal and provincial levels to protect and develop the country's vast and under-utilized waterways. The clock is ticking for Pakistan and it needs to move fast on tapping and conserving its water resources before it is too late.

Attack on Malala Yousafzai Reverberates in NY’s Desi Enclaves

Hundred of Jackson Heights residents watch the first presidential debate at Diversity Plaza in Jackson Heights. (Photo via VOPA)

This story first appeared in Voices of NY.

The Taliban attack on 15-year-old education activist Malala Yousafzai reverberates in Americans of Pakistan descent 10 days after she was shot in the head while riding in a school bus in Mingora, the largest city of the Swat Valley in Pakistan’s troubled northwest.

Now considered an icon for girl education the world over, Malala has helped unite the divided Pakistani nation on the question of how to deal with extremism. Pakistan has seen unprecedented condemnation of the attack on Malala who is undergoing treatment at Queens Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, U.K.

The sentiment on the streets of New York, especially in South Asian enclaves such as Jackson Heights, Queens, and Coney Island Avenue in Brooklyn is no different.

A stream of opinion articles, press statements and media talks by community leaders and commentators, as well as regular folks have a similar message: the time has come for Pakistan to go after terrorists hiding in the treacherous mountains along the country’s porous border with Afghanistan. There have been calls for launching a military operation against the militant hideouts in North Waziristan, the home of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, the terrorist group fighting the Pakistani state.

“Will Malala prove to be a game changer because she has done what (Pakistan) army could not do? She united the people on the question of girl education,” wrote Masoud Haider, a veteran New York-based Pakistani journalist who is a correspondent for Pakistan’s largest daily Dawn, in the Pakistan Post. “Malala brought a revolution despite being from a region where common folks didn’t even hear girls’ whispers. She herself didn’t know on that fateful day when she was ambushed on her way to school that her voice was so powerful that it could stand up to Taliban.”

A number of New York-based Pakistani and South Asian community groups, including Voice of Pakistanis Abroad (VOPA) and Social Uplift, Knowledge Hope Initiatives (SUKHI), screened A Schoolgirl’s Odyssey, a 20-minute documentary produced by New York Times on the struggle of Malala.

The video was shown after the live screening of the vice presidential debate on October 11 at Diversity Plaza, on 37th Road in the heart of Jackson Heights. Interestingly, according to senior community journalist Hasan Mujataba, some Pakistani and Bangladeshi community members objected to the showing of the video. Mujtaba mentioned the incident in an article in the Pakistan Post.

Agha Saleh, one of the film screening organizers, told Voices of NY that some community members approached him to stop the showing. “Their pretext was that the film’s screening will promote Taliban cause,” said Saleh, adding that he still could not comprehend the logic. The screenings attracted politicians such as City Comptroller John C. Liu and Councilman Daniel Dromm to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates along with over 300 people from the area.

VOPA’s founder Agha Saleh (right) with Councilman Daniel Dromm (center), who was given the first “Malala cap.” (Photo via VOPA Facebook page)

Saleh said his organization is promoting the Swati cap, a woolen cap widely popular in the Swat and Chitral valleys of Pakistan, as “Malala cap,” a way of telling the world that Malala is the true face of this picturesque part of Pakistan that has seen a rise in militancy since the 1990s. The first cap was presented to Councilman Daniel Dromm.

“VOPA distributed the Malala caps among people on the street with an appeal to wear it this winter as message to the evil forces that majority of the human beings reject their extremists cowardly acts,” said Saleh.

“We are not going to stop sending our girls to school or university,” Bazah Roohi, a Brooklyn-based entrepreneur who founded the non-profit American Council of Minority Women in 2005 told Desi Talk.

She said if the Taliban was expecting schools and colleges to shut down because they shot an innocent child who campaigned for the right to education, they were sorely mistaken. It was not Pakistanis who did it, she said, and everyone back home believed these are people who wanted to give Pakistan a bad name.

“There have been so many educated women around Pakistan for so many decades, in every field. We are going to fight them. They do not frighten us,” Roohi said.

Some community members believe that the fight in Pakistani’s mountainous northwest is not just against the bandits, thugs, violent extremists and terrorists but also against a mindset.

“Pakistan is at war with the Taliban mindset and their narrative. Their defeat lies in taking away the narrative from them,” said Nafis Takkar, executive editor of Deewa radio, Voice of America’s Pashto language radio channel for northwestern Pakistan, during a interview with a Pakistani TV show in the U.S.

“Malala is the true face of Pakistan. She is a beacon of hope for girls education in Pakistan,” he added on Khabar-o-Nazar (News and Views), hosted by this reporter. Takkar believed the best way to fight extremism could be through the spread of education, especially among girls, transparent and efficient government and bringing opportunity and hope to the region.

But some people are voicing suspicions about the motives behind the brutal Taliban attack on the girl. Some Pakistani-American critics of U.S. policy in  the region, such as Ansar Ahmad, do not hide their fears that the government could use the incident as a pretext for a military operation in the mountainous regions of northwest Pakistan, bordering with Afghanistan.

“I oppose the attack on North Waziristan at this stage because it is not in Pakistan’s national interests,” Ahmad, a former pilot fighter in Pakistan’s Air Force who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s, told Voices of NY.

According to the regional government of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, the province of which Swat is a part, extremists have completely destroyed or partially destroyed over the past few years more than 2,000 schools in the valley and adjoining semi-autonomous tribal regions, leaving more than half a million children without a school.

Saleh said Voice of Pakistani Americans, which has over 18,000 Facebook followers, is currently running a fundraising campaign to rebuild the schools.