The prediction by experts that most of the future world conflicts will be triggered by an impending water scarcity is already beginning to reverberate in South Asia. The ongoing Pakistan-India dispute over the use of Chenab and Jehlum waters threatens to become, after Kashmir, another core issue between them.
For the first time in the history of the Indus Water Treaty, Pakistan recently invoked the treaty's clause that provides for the appointment of a neutral expert by the agreed intermediary, the World Bank, to establish the rights and wrongs of the two sides' respective claims over the Indus systems' six rivers. Unfortunate as it is, being the upper riparian in the Indus water system, India has come to use its geographical position to deprive Pakistan of its due share of water.
It refused to listen to Pakistan's request to change the design of the Baglihar Dam, which it is building on the River Chenab that fell to Pakistan's share under the Indus Treaty, or to suspend construction work on the dam pending a solution, forcing Islamabad to refer the issue to a World Bank appointed neutral expert.
Now the talks on the other controversial issue of Wullar Barrage also seem to have run aground. Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman said at his weekly press briefing on Monday that the barrage that India is building on River Jehlum near Baramula in the occupied Kashmir, is designed to store more water than the Treaty allows.
According to the Treaty, he explained, India can build storage facilities on the rivers flowing into Pakistan that have a maximum capacity to hold 0.1 acre feet of water, whereas the Wullar Barrage is designed to retain 0.324 million acre feet of water.
This would come to 32 times more water than India is allowed to use from one of Pakistan's three rivers. Which, of course, is a flagrant violation of the agreement that the two sides reached in 1960, and continued to honour despite two major wars and two relatively minor conflicts.
Now that the two countries are engaged in a serious dialogue process, and there are indications that they are moving towards the resolution of the core issue of conflict between them, the Kashmir problem, it is unfortunate that the various rounds of talks that they have held on the two contentious water projects have yielded no progress.
After the latest two-day round of talks on the Wullar Barrage in India, all that the Foreign Office spokesman could say on the subject was to reiterate Pakistan's objections and to say that the two sides expressed frank opinions on the issue.
If India's attitude during the Baglihar talks is any guide, it will continue to build the barrage while trying to drag on the discussions long enough to finish the construction work and then, like Ariel Sharon's apartheid wall in the occupied Palestine, to present it later as a fait accompli to this country. If these tactics succeed, it would be too late for Pakistan to refer the case to a World Bank appointed neutral expert.
And being the lower riparian, Pakistan would find itself wringing its hands in despair ever after. So the time for it to act is now. As it is, India's economic compulsions have pushed it to seek resolution of all outstanding issues with Pakistan through the on-going composite dialogue process.
Islamabad must use this opportunity to ensure its future water security by insisting on a fair solution of the Baglihar Dam and Wullar Barrage problems as a central plank of the confidence-building measures that the two sides are undertaking to underpin the overarching peace process.
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