Pakistan Press on: Polarising, Indus, Treaty, Legal, Judicial: New Age Islam's Selection, 1 May 2025
By New Age Islam Edit Desk
1 May 2025
India’s Polarising Powder Keg
Delhi’s Indus Waters Treaty Move Is Dangerous
War Is Not The Way
Is The Indus Decision Legal?
Modi Madness At The Third Pole
Judicial Despondency
Indus Water Wars
Trojan Traditions
A Gentler World
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India’s Polarising Powder Keg
By Yousuf Nazar
May 01, 2025
A spectre of war now hovers over South Asia – and not only because of tanks on the Line of Control. In the wake of the April 22 terror ambush in Pahalgam’s Baisaran Valley in Occupied Kashmir that brutally claimed 26 lives, New Delhi unilaterally suspended the Indus Waters Treaty, Islamabad threatened to void the Simla Agreement, and both countries have massed troops.
Rhetoric has surged to war-like proportions, even as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres personally reached out to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and India’s External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and expressed his deep concern at the rising tensions between India and Pakistan, emphasising the need to avoid a confrontation that could result in tragic consequences.
On April 22, five gunmen – that India claims were affiliated with an outfit called The Resistance Front – opened fire on 26 tourists (25 Indian nationals and one local Muslim guide) amid the verdant meadows of Baisaran. It was the deadliest civilian attack in Kashmir since 2008. Within hours and offering no evidence, New Delhi announced the suspension of the five-decade-old, World Bank–brokered Indus Waters Treaty, upon which some 80 per cent of Pakistan’s irrigation depends. Islamabad retaliated by closing its airspace, halting bilateral trade and hinting it might rescind the 1972 Simla Agreement, which has underpinned ceasefire protocols for half a century.
Across the de-facto border, artillery exchanges have taken place. Two days back, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warned that an Indian incursion is “imminent”, while Information Minister Atta Tarar claimed on Tuesday that there was “credible intelligence” of a strike within 24–36 hours.
Even as armies face off, mobs in India have seized upon the crisis to unleash sectarian violence. Within India, polarising currents are tearing at the social fabric. In the past fortnight. In Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, a 15-year-old Muslim schoolboy was forced to unbuckle his belt and urinate on a Pakistani flag by upper-caste youths furious over the Kashmir ambush. The adolescent was beaten simply for chanting in solidarity with Kashmiris, a protest as much about dignity as geopolitics.
In Mangaluru, Karnataka, a daily-wage labourer was lynched after allegedly shouting ‘Pakistan zindabad’ during a cricket match. Police have detained 15 suspects, yet the victim’s identity and the mob’s precise motive remain obscure.
In Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, 16 Kashmiri shawl-sellers – branded ‘outsiders’ – were driven from Mall Road by an angry crowd. Three vendors required hospital treatment, their livelihoods shattered by street-level bigotry.
These are not isolated incidents but the direct offspring of a fevered climate in which any perceived sympathy for “the other” is equated with treason.
War between India and Pakistan could be neither contained nor brief. The real-world fallout – starvation, destitution, public-health collapse and mass displacement – would spiral well beyond the LoC, imperilling South Asia’s development gains and global stability alike. The stakes could not be higher.
More than 336 million adults on both sides of the border remain illiterate, representing around 44 per cent of the global total. This is the largest concentration of illiterate population on earth. India and Pakistan together harbour around 140 million of the world’s poorest, nearly one in five of all those living on under $2.15/day. Violence would further imperil their already difficult existence.
Instead of acting as a balm, the ruling BJP has seized upon the crisis to deepen domestic divides. India had been planning to use water as a weapon for years. On September 26, 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting on the 56-year-old Indus Waters Treaty and declared: “Blood and water cannot flow together”. Modi’s divisive policies have extended the National Register of Citizens beyond Assam, with senior BJP figures promising roll-outs in Jharkhand and Karnataka during the 2024–25 state election campaigns.
The recent Immigration and Foreigners Bill, 2025, fast-tracked through parliament in March 2025, empowers officials to refuse entry or deport any foreign national on “such other grounds as the central government may specify,” effectively permitting mass expulsions on nebulous “security” grounds without meaningful appeal.
These measures have coincided with, and in practice lent de facto approval to, a resurgence of communal vigilante violence. BJP-affiliated cow vigilantes have even won party tickets, while mobs have lynched individuals suspected of ‘anti-national’ sentiments, often with impunity. Such state-sanctioned exclusion erodes India’s pluralist foundations and sends a clear signal that majoritarian mobs need fear neither legal nor political consequence. A Human Rights Watch analysis found that 110 of Modi’s 173 speeches in 2024 contained Islamophobic rhetoric, correlating with spikes in communal unrest, from the Assam NRC statelessness crisis to mob attacks in Haryana’s Nuh district.
If the subcontinent’s two nuclear-armed rivals cannot pull back from the brink, powerful external actors must step in:
United States: Washington has publicly urged restraint, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio planning calls with the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan to press for de-escalation along the Line of Control. In those engagements, US officials emphasised the importance of upholding existing international agreements – particularly the Indus Waters Treaty – to maintain regional stability. The US appears to be leaning on high-level strategic dialogues and longstanding security partnerships to encourage both sides to stand down.
Saudi Arabia: With deep ties to Islamabad and Delhi, Riyadh could play an important role in restoring regional calm.
China: Beijing has publicly backed Pakistan’s call for an impartial probe into the Pahalgam attack – “hoping both sides will exercise restraint, move toward each other, and work to de-escalate tensions” – as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi put it. China also has a powerful incentive to see India–Pakistan hostilities defused. In FY 2024–25, China was India’s second-largest trading partner, with two-way commerce of $127.7 billion (15 per cent of India’s imports). Beijing’s Belt and Road projects depend on stability in Pakistan, and Chinese firms rely on access to Indian markets. Direct diplomatic engagement by China could therefore both assuage Islamabad’s security concerns and press New Delhi to rein in extremist posturing on both fronts.
European Union and United Nations: Brussels and New York can remind New Delhi that global markets prize pluralism as much as geopolitical muscle.
Modi’s gamble on nationalist fervour carries enormous risk. A descent into cross-border war – or even further communal carnage at home – would shatter South Asia’s economy, drive millions into destitution and render the region an international pariah.
If restraint cannot be mustered from within, it must be compelled from without. The world’s major powers – and key Gulf partners – must deploy every diplomatic and economic lever to force restraint, before bellicose rhetoric leads to real war and before hope is drowned in blood.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1306939-india-s-polarising-powder-keg
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Delhi’s Indus Waters Treaty Move Is Dangerous
By Muhammad Zaman Khan
May 01, 2025
Following the deadly terrorist attack in Pahalgam in Occupied Kashmir, India announced the suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), a water-sharing agreement with Pakistan that has endured wars, crises and regime changes for over six decades.
Citing national security concerns and Pakistan’s alleged involvement in the attack (a claim which has not been substantiated by any credible evidence whatsoever), India halted cooperation under the treaty, including data sharing and Permanent Indus Commission meetings. This move, while politically resonant, challenges fundamental principles of international law, treaty obligations and the cooperative management of shared resources. The implications extend far beyond the subcontinent.
Signed in 1960 with the World Bank’s facilitation, the IWT allocates the waters of the Indus River system between India (eastern rivers: Ravi, Beas, Sutlej) and Pakistan (western rivers: Indus, Jhelum, Chenab). It includes a dispute resolution mechanism and lacks an exit clause; Article XII provides that the treaty remains in force unless terminated by mutual agreement. Despite hostility between the two nations, the treaty functioned as a rare anchor of stability.
India’s current actions, while not a formal termination, amount to a de-facto suspension. India has placed the treaty in ‘abeyance’, withholding its obligations without formally renouncing them. International law, however, does not treat ‘abeyance’ as a legal status. The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties addresses only suspension and termination (Articles 60–62). The ICJ, in the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Project, made clear that suspending treaty obligations requires compliance with strict legal criteria.
Scholars like Anthony Aust reaffirm that ‘abeyance’ is political language, not a legal doctrine. The law requires either compliance or formal lawful suspension, not indefinite inaction. As such, India’s measures fall under unlawful suspension in the eyes of international law.
India might seek to justify its move under rebus sic stantibus, the doctrine allowing suspension in case of fundamental change in circumstances (Article 62, Vienna Convention). Yet this doctrine is extremely narrow. The ICJ has clarified that the change must be unforeseen, strike at the essential basis of consent, and radically transform the remaining obligations. Terrorist violence, tragic as it is, does not alter the hydrological, technical, or legal foundations of the IWT. The Indus still flows, and its allocation remains unchanged. Thus, any claim under rebus sic stantibus would likely fail.
India has not accused Pakistan of violating the treaty’s provisions directly, which is required under Article 60 for lawful suspension based on material breach. The allegations relate to terrorism, serious, but extraneous to the IWT. A treaty cannot be suspended based on grievances unrelated to its subject matter. International law demands proportionality and linkage, not political frustration.
India’s action also contravenes established principles of customary international water law. The UN Watercourses Convention (1997), though not ratified by either party, reflects widely accepted norms: equitable and reasonable utilisation, no significant harm and a duty to cooperate. Unilaterally suspending dialogue and threatening flow alterations violates these obligations. The principle of equitable utilisation prohibits states from over-using or denying co-riparian states their fair share.
The no-harm rule requires India to avoid causing serious injury to Pakistan through altered water flows. And most importantly, the duty to cooperate obliges regular engagement, data sharing and peaceful dispute resolution. By stepping back from these commitments, India undermines not just bilateral trust but international expectations of transboundary water governance.
The humanitarian impact on Pakistan could be dire. Over 90 per cent of Pakistan’s agriculture depends on the water of the Indus. Crops like wheat, rice, and cotton in Punjab and Sindh are irrigated via this system. Already ranked among the most water-stressed countries by the World Resources Institute, Pakistan risks spiralling into water insecurity. Urban centres like Lahore and Karachi rely on Indus-fed aquifers, and hydropower installations generate nearly one-third of national electricity. Interruption in water flows, even temporarily, could jeopardise food security, drive mass migration and trigger economic destabilisation.
Access to water is also a recognised human right under international law. The UN General Assembly Resolution 64/292 affirms water as essential for the realisation of life, health and dignity. If a state unilaterally disrupts water to another, especially in peacetime, it risks violating international human rights law, not just treaty law.
Pakistan’s legal options include invoking Article IX of the IWT and initiating arbitration. It may also approach the ICJ or the UN Security Council, arguing that India’s actions threaten international peace. Realistically, jurisdictional and political hurdles exist. But the symbolic and normative value of such legal challenges remains strong. They reaffirm rule of law as the proper avenue for resolving treaty disputes. For India, the decision carries reputational risks. As a self-styled proponent of international law, India’s credibility weakens when it selectively upholds binding commitments. This could damage its bid for greater leadership in global institutions, raise red flags for treaty partners and undermine trust in its role in regional cooperation. There are strategic dangers too. By legitimising the idea of water as a political weapon, India inadvertently invites similar conduct by others, especially China, which controls upstream flows of the Brahmaputra. The erosion of treaty sanctity is a double-edged sword.
The broader global implications are equally troubling. The IWT has long been celebrated as a model transboundary water treaty. If one of the signatories can unilaterally suspend its participation without clear legal justification, what becomes of similar treaties elsewhere? Agreements over the Nile, the Jordan or the Mekong could all be endangered by this precedent. The weakening of ‘pacta sunt servanda’, the principle that treaties must be honoured, threatens the stability of international law more generally.
Water is the basis of life, the foundation of agriculture, energy, health and peace. Turning it into a bargaining chip sets a dangerous precedent not just for India and Pakistan but for every water-stressed region in the world. Once the idea that water-sharing treaties are optional takes hold, the door opens to an age of hydro-political brinkmanship. India must be urged to restore full compliance with the Treaty and re-engage through the Permanent Indus Commission. International actors, from the World Bank to the UN, must play a more visible role in mediation. Legal accountability must be paired with diplomatic pressure to reaffirm that the law still matters. Future water-sharing treaties must include stronger enforcement clauses and third-party oversight to prevent unilateral disengagement.
The suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty represents more than a regional dispute. It is a test of the durability of law in the face of political anger, of the idea that rules should outlast war, and that cooperation must survive crisis. The rivers must continue to flow, not just with water, but with legality, accountability – and the shared will to live in peace.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1306940-delhi-s-iwt-move-is-dangerous
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War Is Not The Way
By Omar Quraishi
May 01, 2025
India is building a case with the rest of the world, especially the countries that count, to allow it to launch an attack on Pakistan – in retaliation for what it mistakenly thinks is Pakistan’s involvement in the Pahalgam attacks of April 22.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world, in particular the US, is not buying India’s argument or its ‘proofs’ – all unverified and never officially disclosed – that the attackers’ electronic signatures were traced to cities in Pakistan. Perhaps the view of the US on this so far can be summed up in what US President Donald Trump said the other day: that Pakistan and India had been fighting Kashmir for a “thousand years”, and that he was “very close” to both India as well as Pakistan. This further meant that he wasn’t going to accuse Pakistan of anything and that he didn’t agree with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of being involved in the attacks and of using that as a pretext to launch a ‘retaliatory’ attack inside Pakistan.
As for Pakistan, it has played its hand well by offering to be part of a probe into the attack that is neutral and independent it has shown to the rest of the world that it has nothing to hide. In fact, by refusing to agree to this, which is most likely, India will give the impression to the world that it is not in favour of a neutral and independent probe because it has something to hide.
And that brings us to several important questions, none of which are being asked by the mainstream media in India. However, one does see clips on social media of Indian citizens beginning to ask these most basic of questions surrounding the unfortunate attack.
The most obvious of these relate to the attack itself. It took place in a meadow surrounded by dense forests at a height of around 3,000 metres and which is accessible only by foot or horseback. Pahalgam is around 100 kms east of Srinagar, which is around 80-100 kms from the Line of Control. So the question is: where was the security? Why was the Jammu and Kashmir police unable to stop the attack? How could a group of heavily armed men reach a meadow accessible only by foot or horseback without drawing attention?
If, for the sake of argument, the Indian accusations are to be believed that the attackers came from Pakistan then how were they able to cross the LoC and traverse close to 200 kms to the location of the attack without being detected either by the police or the 700,000 Indian army soldiers posted in Indian-occupied Kashmir?
These are some of the very basic questions that one needs to see being asked by the Indian media of its government and its intelligence agencies. But that is not what’s happening at all – the Indian media is basically a ready facilitator of all the baseless allegations and accusations that the Indian government is lobbing at Pakistan.
The oft-repeated though wholly-unverified and basically made-up claim by India that it has traced some of the attackers to cities in Pakistan has yet to be disclosed in detail and simply India saying that this is the case is not going to convince the rest of the world. In fact, a neutral and independent probe, as alluded to by Pakistan’s prime minister and interior minister in recent days, would be able to precisely check the veracity of such claims.
The drumbeat of war in mainstream Indian media is inescapable and it appears as if most of the channels playing it think that a war has casualties and deaths only on one side and that victory will be guaranteed. They also seem to think that the other side will not respond in any way and – more crucially – also seems to conveniently forget that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.
You can’t expect to wage a war against a nuclear-armed neighbour and predict with even the smallest degree of accuracy that such a war won’t escalate to a point where either side may end up using its nuclear weapons, or even smaller tactical nuclear weapons. Even a war that is fought at the conventional level and doesn’t escalate – which in itself is very unlikely – will cause massive casualties on both sides.
What India needs to do is to listen to the countries and to its own citizens who are advising it to de-escalate and not think about launching a war. It should instead agree – like Pakistan has agreed – to a neutral and independent probe. Other than the obvious consequence of saving thousands of lives on either side, if India doesn’t, then the theory which is very strongly believed by most Pakistanis – that it was a false flag operation by the government to benefit the BJP and strengthen its Hindutva and anti-minority credentials among its vote bank – will only be reinforced in the eyes of the rest of the world as well.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1306943-war-is-not-the-way
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Is The Indus Decision Legal?
By Mehwish Batool
May 01, 2025
In the wake of the tragic Pahalgam terror attack, India has decided to unilaterally suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, citing “fundamental changes” driven by demographic shifts, environmental concerns and cross-border terrorism – a move widely regarded as an untenable legal claim.
The Indus Waters Treaty is a significant water- sharing agreement between these two nuclear-armed neighbours, signed in 1960 with the help of the World Bank. It specifies the distribution of waters of six rivers and their tributaries. The treaty allocates the western rivers – Indus, Jhelum and Chenab – to Pakistan and distributes the eastern Rivers including Ravi, Beas and Sutlej to India.
For the settlement of disputes, the treaty establishes a graded mechanism which operates at three levels. First, deliberation by Indus commissioners appointed on the behalf of both countries. Second, deliberation by the ‘neutral expert. And lastly, through a Court of Arbitration. In the midst of the ongoing tensions, India bypassed the established mechanisms mentioned in Article VIII and IX of the treaty and chose instead to suspend the treaty unilaterally.
In international law, the suspension of treaties is governed by the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969. The VCLT states that the termination of a treaty, or its suspension can only take place either in conformity with the provisions of the respective treaty or through the application of the articles of the VCLT.
As the Indus Waters Treaty contains no provision for its suspension, it can be suspended through the application of the VCLT. Article 60(1) of the VCLT states that a bilateral treaty can only be suspended if there is a material breach on the part of either of the states entitling the other party to terminate or suspend its operation in whole or in part.
There are two types of material breach under Article 60(3) of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT): (i) a repudiation of the treaty not authorised by the Vienna Convention, and (ii) the violation of a provision that is essential to the achievement of the treaty’s object or purpose. While the Vienna Convention does not specify the degree of breach required, a substantial violation of an essential provision is considered a material breach.
Similarly, Article 62 of the VCLT allows for the suspension of a treaty based on a “fundamental change of circumstances” if: (a) the existence of those circumstances was an essential basis for the consent of the parties to the treaty, and (b) the effect of the change radically transforms the obligations still to be performed under the treaty.
However, India’s justifications for suspending the 64-year-old Indus Waters Treaty – citing changed demographics and the need to accelerate the development of clean energy – do not meet the criteria for either a material breach or a fundamental change of circumstances.
India’s invocation of ‘cross-border terrorism’ as a ‘fundamental change of circumstances’ under Article 62 of VCLT to suspend the treaty also lacks legal and diplomatic basis. The Indus Waters Treaty withstood three India-Pakistan wars including the 1965 India-Pakistan war, the 1971 India-Pakistan war and the 1999 Kargil war as well as multiple military conflicts including the 2001-2002 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament, the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and the 2016 surgical strikes etc.
India’s baseless allegation against Pakistan’s direct involvement in the Pahalgam terror attack also lacks factual basis and rests purely on speculation. In the Nicaragua case, the International Court of Justice stated that an “obvious” action done by a state – such as the United States’ direct attack on Nicaraguan ports and oil installations and the mining of ports – constituted material breaches under the VCLT as well as the violation of the 1956 Friendship, Commerce and Navigation Treaty. In the present case, however, no such direct or attributable act by Pakistan has been demonstrated.
Thus, India’s move to suspend the Indus Waters Treaty is a legal façade, devoid of any substantive evidence required to invoke VCLT. Rather than a considered act of legal prudence, it appears to be a reactive measure provoked by the tragic Pahalgam terror attack in order to sabotage the agrarian economy of Pakistan which is heavily dependent on the water flow of the Indus Basin.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1306942-is-the-indus-decision-legal
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Modi Madness At The Third Pole
By Engineer Khurram Dastgir-Khan
May 01, 2025
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.”
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/1306941-modi-madness-at-the-third-pole
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Judicial Despondency
Basil Nabi Malik
May 1, 2025
WHEN the 26th Amendment was controversially passed, it was trumpeted by the ruling elite as a much-needed check on the excesses committed by the judiciary. It was supposed to be a rebalancing act to restore equilibrium between the executive, parliament and judiciary. The constitutional benches, a product of the same, were supposed to usher in the revival of a truly depoliticised judiciary, with a greater focus on institutional efficiency.
However, this narrative appears to have fallen apart. Firstly, the judiciary is being perceived as more politicised than ever before. The executive has used its overwhelming powers and influence in the Judicial Commission of Pakistan (JCP) to appoint judges of its liking, and has found itself in a position to decide who will hear what kind of case, and which ‘junior’ judge will grace the constitutional benches. All of this has been done without assigning any reasons for the choices being made, whether in relation to the credentials of the nominations or the question of why a junior judge is preferred in supersession to a senior.
Although the ruling elite denies it, many see these attempts to pick and choose as an extension of the concept of the ‘like-minded bench’, but on a much larger scale. It may not be the same thing as bench-picking or forum shopping, but as of late, there has been much talk, some of it in jest, of a new age of judge-picking, where the best man for the job is the man who is best for the job given.
Another case in point is the recent appointments to the high courts. The JCP had issued lists of candidates to be considered for appointment to the high courts. A large number of candidates were reputed to be impartial, principled and highly intelligent. Additionally, there were also a number of candidates who were believed to be close to the ruling class, or at the very least, preferred by them. This is not to say that they necessarily lacked competence, but that the common denominator was their perceived closeness to those in power.
When the dust settled and the appointments were finally made, one could not help but think that with regard to most of these appointments, perceived allegiance, loyalty and partiality triumphed over the criteria of principles, integrity, competence and uprightness. It was a day of rejoicing for those seeking to avoid accountability, and heartbreak for those invested in the present and future of a strong and robust judiciary.
Secondly, after the emergence of the constitutional benches, the potency of writ petitions has become somewhat questionable. In boasting about record tax collections on the back of the 26th Amendment and the clearance of backlogs, the government is actually acknowledging and expressing its jubilation over indications that courts may now be prone to giving less relief, and becoming more risk averse and less courageous in taking on the government.
In the Sindh High Court, for example, some judges are perceived to be in a hurry to dismiss cases or remove them from the purview of the SHC’s writ jurisdiction. Although early disposals may make for great sound bites, a quick disposal without considered adjudication is just as serious a threat to access to justice and fundamental rights as are backlogs. This appears all the more accurate when one notes that such disposals do not really lessen the backlog, but merely move it up the appellate ladder. A similar trend has also been seen in Sindh’s district courts, where a tremendous focus on early disposals can lead to adverse consequences for fairness and accuracy in judicial decision-making.
In any case, this ever-tightening noose around the neck of public interest litigation and activism will continue to shake the very foundations of writ jurisdiction and the fundamental rights it aimed to protect. In fact, in some matters, a number of litigants file or proceed with matters by primarily assessing which bench will be hearing which case.
For instance, in matters before the SHC pertaining to the illegal commercial use of residential plots, as of late, many are finding it hard to obtain any relief from the court, with benches routinely sending the matter back to be resolved by the same regulator that is being accused of wrongdoing or negligence and against whom such petitions were filed in the first place.
Thirdly, whether one admits it or not, the 26th Amendment has done great harm to the overall credibility of the judiciary. The judiciary, being an institution that is missing an enforcement arm of its own, relies on its credibility and higher moral standing to command respect, adherence and compliance. When the judiciary is perceived to be under the thumb of those it is supposed to check, or under their influence, its credibility, standing and integrity come into question. In such a scenario, any and every decision it gives, whether valid or not, will face a crisis of legitimacy.
It is because of this that litigants, laymen as well as lawyers are murmuring about the judiciary’s alleged subservience and their own lack of trust or confidence in its ability to do justice or hold government authorities to account. Many are heard whispering about allegedly undeclared policies to curtail certain types of litigation by way of issuing standard orders. Whether true or not, the increasing chorus of such whispers serves as a stark reminder of the potential erosion of judicial credibility, casting doubts on the judiciary’s position as a neutral arbiter of disputes.
The reality of the situation may very well be different; however, sometimes perceptions are a more potent reality than reality itself. And this perceived reality needs to be addressed. If not, difficult times await us — when judicial integrity will be unequivocally doubted, judicial credibility dismissed, perhaps irreparably, and worse still, the protector of our fundamental rights may come to be seen as a facilitator of its very violations.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1907678/judicial-despondency
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Indus Water Wars
Khurram Husain
May 1, 2025
AT the time of writing, the sounds of war drums are hard and heavy, but it is as yet uncertain whether kinetic conflict will break out between India and Pakistan, and if it does, what shape and form it will take. While military experts debate the questions arising from kinetic conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, it is worth pointing out that much of what India actually wants out of this whole affair has already been obtained. And that is an exit from the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).
Long after the dust has settled and Pahalgam has been added to a list that already has Pulwama and Uri on it, the enduring effects of India’s unilateral and illegal withdrawal from the treaty will be a big chokehold on Pakistan. India’s withdrawal from the treaty amounts to illegally claiming the river water as its own property.
There is a history here, which suggests that this withdrawal from the treaty is what India wanted for a long time. It has used the present crisis as a distraction under which to take this step. The first mention made by India of its wish to withdraw from the treaty was in 2016, after the attack in Uri, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that “blood and water cannot flow together”. That statement was a trial balloon, and as it turned out, the first of a series of steps India took towards laying claim to the waters of the Indus river and the two western rivers that the treaty has given to Pakistan.
The second major step came in 2019. The real response to the attack in Pulwama did not come 11 days later in Balakot, as is commonly believed. The real response came in August 2019, in the form of a presidential ordinance that illegally absorbed Indian-occupied Kashmir into the Indian federation, effectively revoking Article 370 of the Indian constitution. This was coupled with the passage of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.
Among the far-reaching legal changes brought in by this ordinance and the Act, one is of particular interest. The Act brought all land acquisition in Jammu and Kashmir under India’s central government law of 2013, and revoked Article 35A which barred non-residents of Jammu and Kashmir from owning land inside the two territories. In the years that followed, rules governing land acquisition were modified further and the J&K Land Acquisition Act of 1934 was repealed altogether.
After these changes came a surge in project-related investment in the disputed territory. One report in the Indian media, citing government figures, says 6,851 project proposals totalling over $14 billion have been received since the changes allowed outsiders to acquire land and set up businesses inside the disputed territory. More significantly, ministries like railways, transport, defence, civil aviation and power have all acquired land in the disputed territory since the changes in 2019. More directly, the Ratle Hydropower Plant project that was initiated on the Chenab back in 2013, was challenged unsuccessfully by Pakistan in 2017 and fast-tracked in India in 2021 when the government took over the project from its private sector sponsors.
In January 2023, under continued Pakistani opposition to the Ratle project and the ongoing dispute over the Kishenganga project, India finally served notice on Pakistan, citing a far-reaching “fundamental change in circumstances” surrounding the treaty and saying it no longer reflected the current reality. In August 2024, it repeated the same argument. The wording is chosen to activate Article 62 of the Vienna Convention, which allows states to exit treaty obligations if there is a “fundamental change in circumstances”.
Quite obviously, India has not only been harbouring wishes to exit the IWT, but also preparing the ground for doing so — for many years now. Having finally taken the step under the noise and fury of an ongoing stand-off, which drowns out the real importance of the step, it is now in a clear position to begin work on projects that could be capable of diverting large amounts of water from the upper reaches of the Indus river system. Pakistan has not succeeded in getting India to reverse its steps of 2019, through which it absorbed the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir into its federation. It now faces the uphill challenge of getting India to return to its commitments under the IWT.
There is another history to remember here. In the aftermath of the Mumbai incident in 2008, India campaigned against Pakistan’s financial system in the Financial Action Task Force for almost 10 years. I covered and wrote about this for years while it unfolded, and realised during the course of FATF-related developments that, on the Pakistani side, people were grossly underestimating the adverse impact the grey listing had on Pakistan’s economy, and equally importantly, how deeply they were misled about the real reasons why Pakistan was struggling to get its financial system cleared from the cloud of terror financing that the FATF had cast over it.
It was not until 2019 that the authorities took decisive action. Hafiz Saeed was finally arrested and later convicted on a number of charges and Jamaatud Dawa disbanded. Pakistan still spent three years trying to get off the FATF grey list.
This time we cannot afford to spend years before waking up to the real weight and importance of what India has done, under the cover provided by the sound and fury of the stand-off. In 2019, India took the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and illegally claimed it as its own. Now it has done the same with the waters of the Indus river system, which by all rights belong to Pakistan.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1907677/indus-water-wars
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Trojan Traditions
F.S. Aijazuddin
May 1, 2025
‘JO ayega Nadaun, kon jaeyga Nadaun?’ This 19th-century aphorism described the allure of the hill station of Nadaun, now in India’s Himachal Pradesh. In 1947, India got the Punjab Hill states. Pakistan received the equally irresistible scenery of Gilgit-Baltistan.
Any disappointment at leaving Hunza is compensated by a cloudless view of Rakaposhi on the way to Shigar Fort. The spectacular scenery mocks modernity.
The Shigar Fort hotel is more intimate than others in the Serena group. The common amenities — an open-air restaurant with vines yet to sprout, the secluded garden with apple blossoms, and the babbling stream — remain unchanged, despite the tourist traffic that uses it as a stopover between Skardu and Khaplu.
One night in Shigr is a necessity; two is self-indulgence. The attraction of Khaplu (another fort sensitively reconstructed) is irresistible. In its day, the ruler’s 150-year-old hideaway must have inspired awe in everyone (friend or foe) approaching it. Low gateways lead to a tiered tower, crowned with a semicircular wooden balcony. It commands admiration.
The antique rooms have been refurbished and maintained with fierce diligence. To suggest adding a few shelves to a cupboard is, to the staff, akin to heresy.
The custodians of an old mosque in Khaplu have no such inhibitions. The façade, with its roof supported by soaring freshly seasoned beams, is new. So is the cavernous interior, except for six original pillars.
Someone suggested a trip to Crystal Lake in Saling. Avoid such misleading distractions. The lake is a man-made reservoir which feeds the nearby trout farm.
The village of Machlu has more scenic vistas per square inch than the Vatican has churches. The greenery of tended terraced fields, the spiked ridge of mountain tops, the descent into Hushe valley, and the Mashabrum viewpoint are enough to overload any scrapbook.
Most people wait until late spring to enjoy the apple and walnut blossoms. At higher altitudes, nature rewards early birds. A queue of inquisitive goats in search of pasture completes an idyllic composition.
The village huts are assembled from boulders, with narrow, low entrances and a roofless amenity outhouse.
Our next destination was Partuk, a military outpost 40 kilometres from Khaplu. The road leads to Leh in Indian-held territory. That was as close as one could get to the frontier. This seemed hardly the right time though to test fraying Indo-Pak nerves.
The tradition in the mountains is to assist anyone who needs a lift. We picked up six young labourers who had left their site to have a quick lunch at a local madressah. It honours M. al Marouf Badua, a modern majzoub, or hermit, who died in July 1973.
Returning to Khaplu gave one the chance (missed on a previous visit) of seeing the ancient Chaqchan mosque. Said to date from 1370, it marks the period of conversion of the local residents from Tibetan Buddhism to Islam. The mosque spiritually and architecturally shares an affinity with the shrine of Sheikh Hamdan in Srinagar.
A final detour took one to the waterfall at Manthokha. It is not a spectacular sight by alpine standards, but honeymooners and weekenders (it was a Sunday), worked their selfies overtime. On the way back to Khaplu, lines of women washed their clothes in the drying Indus. The potential for tourism of the northern areas is enormous. In Nadaun, for example, the local government is spending IRs 300 crores to attract visitors. In our northern areas, such promotion is left to the initiative of private entrepreneurs.
The PIA flight over the GB mountains and then the Punjab plains thrust one back into an oven of urban congestion and an ongoing political inferno.
I visited Pahalgam some years ago. Even then, the presence of Indian troops was ubiquitous, an outpost every half a kilometre. One wonders, therefore, why the stringent security there, rather like at Mumbai in 2008, could be as porous as a string shopping bag. It makes a mockery of the trillions of Indian rupees spent on leaving the disputed territory so penetrable and insecure.
PM Modi’s policy, rather like President Trump’s, is to antagonise his neighbours. He has abjured the Gujral and Vajpayee doctrines of a ‘friendly neighbourhood’. Now, he wants to scrap unilaterally the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. One should remember its concluding clause: “The provisions of this Treaty… shall continue in force until terminated by a duly ratified treaty concluded for that purpose between the two Governments.”
Can Modi’s unilateral abrogation lead to a war between two nuclear powers, without polluting the disputed rivers?
It might be simpler to subdue an enemy with a targeted power outage, like the one that disabled the entire Iberian Peninsula (Spain plus Portugal).
Perhaps we should revert to Trojan traditions and field a single champion to combat at the Wagah-Attari border?
https://www.dawn.com/news/1907676/trojan-traditions
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A Gentler World
Madeeha Ansari
May 1, 2025
APRIL 30 was the International Day to End Corporal Punishment — one that could slip into obscurity unless pulled into the light with the urgency required to end cyclical, intergenerational violence.
In workshops with teachers in Islamabad Capital Territory, a question of interest has been whether they themselves experienced classroom-based corporal punishment in childhood. In government schools, over 70 per cent said yes; for community schools, the response was nearly 100pc. Years later, the memory of individually experienced violent or humiliating punishment was both vivid and fresh. ‘Math teacher, Grade 6 — twisted my little finger right around, and I ran from her class and never felt I could do math.’ ‘Class assembly — teacher hit me because I mispronounced Urdu words, and then I lost the confidence to speak.’
Nearly every time, the transgression was minor and, sometimes, an involuntary mistake, but the punishment left a lasting imprint. For some teachers, the impression was that corporal punishment pushed them to do better, and fear of the stick helped them become the people they were. Whether that or individual motivation drove success, what we do have evidence for is that the experience of corporal punishment in childhood makes it more likely for adults to become perpetrators in turn.
If children experience violent discipline, they internalise it as a legitimate way of asserting authority. This can enter their interactions with other children, so that they resolve conflict or assert dominance through violence in the playground and at home. It can also affect their relationships in the long term and is linked with a higher incidence of domestic violence in adulthood. There’s also a higher risk of aggression and violence at the societal level. That is why, to this day, violent discipline is the norm in schools in Pakistan.
This is not to say that the practice is always rooted in malice; many teachers actually see it as a tool for instruction. Often, they can be asked to use it by parents who want their children to learn better. In reality, a meta-analysis of studies over 50 years by End Corporal Punishment showed there is no evidence that such punishment leads to better educational outcomes. Instead, it contributes to poorer cognitive development, lower socioemotional development and worse educational outcomes overall, as it is linked with a higher risk of dropout. In a Pakistan-based study, 93pc of 1,700 respondents cited corporal punishment as a major cause of dropout. For children who are already at risk of being out of school, being beaten at school can actually tip the scales — why would they attend?
In a country facing an education and learning crisis, and with alarming numbers of out-of-school children, there is an urgent need to address this. Motivation to attend and stay in school can be built by ensuring positive perceptions of the classroom experience, with teachers as role models and attachment figures. A love for learning cannot be built on the foundation of fear.
A gentler world, then, can start with a compassionate classroom. This is more important than ever in an increasingly fractured world, where violence and polarisation are on the rise. Now is the time to reconstruct the idea of school as a sanctuary, where children are protected and given the space and support to learn, explore their best selves and express ideas with confidence.
To move towards this, there are already some trailblazers in terms of legislation. In Islamabad and Sindh, corporal punishment is prohibited in learning spaces, including schools, madressahs and daycare facilities, while in Gilgit-Baltistan, the prohibition extends to home settings. There is a need for similar legislative steps across the country, as this lays the foundation for change.
However, in order to start shifting deeply entrenched practices, legislation must be accompanied by real communication with teachers and caregivers. The experience of delivering ‘Maar Nahi Pyaar’ workshops with teachers showed that against the backdrop of the new laws, sharing knowledge of alternatives to corporal punishment, such as positive discipline and classroom management, can actually change behaviour. If policy-level reforms can translate into safeguarding systems at the school level, with the management on board and mechanisms to report and address complaints, it can help drive accountability and ensure that legislation means something on the ground.
Changing underlying attitudes and beliefs is a far more difficult task. However, if teachers can re-examine the experience of the violent or humiliating punishment seared in their memories, look at it through a different lens, and then question their own approach, perhaps the cycle can end with them.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1907675/a-gentler-world
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URL: https://www.newageislam.com/pakistan-press/polarising-indus-treaty-legal-judicial/d/135383
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