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Khurram Husain // DAWN: May 8, 2025
INDIA and Pakistan are being driven, inexorably, towards a confrontation that neither side wants but neither side can avert. The drivers of conflict have multiplied, the limits tested by these episodic stand-offs have been stretched, and the points of contact between their militaries during the kinetic manoeuvres in each of these stand-offs has multiplied.
From the first such stand-off, perhaps in 1990, till today, there is an unmistakable trajectory of escalation. What is driving this?
One of the big drivers is India’s attempt to end its difficulties in occupied Kashmir using a violent development model that has lain behind the rise of Narendra Modi. The model was born in the early 2000s that saw two pivotal developments in both India and Pakistan. Up until 9/11, Pakistan was being pushed increasingly towards global isolation and its economy was depleted to near breaking point. The country had undergone three rounds of debt rescheduling and just finished a gruelling, short-term Stand-by Arrangement with the IMF that left the populace battered with unemployment and sharply rising energy costs. There was no further growth path for Pakistan in those years other than deeper structural reform, which was proving too heavy a burden even for a dictator with near absolute power.
However, 9/11 changed all that overnight. Instantly, Pakistan went from being an international pariah to a front-line state in a superpower’s war, and was eventually crowned with the status of ‘major non Nato ally’. The volume of money that poured into the country, coupled with the generous terms of debt rescheduling extended by the Paris Club in December 2001, impacting a total debt stock of $12.5 billion, allowed the regime of Gen Musharraf to pump growth to unprecedented levels, creating a bubble economy that made more fortunes for more people than any similar period in the country’s history.
Modi’s model of development rested on the ability to efficiently dispossess people and take land required for large-scale projects.
This sudden reversal of fortunes in Pakistan came as a rude shock to our neighbours in India. Over the course of the 1990s, India and Pakistan were locked in a stand-off over Kashmir, which left India increasingly embattled by the uprising in the occupied territory and Pakistan in the grip of sanctions and isolation. India accused Pakistan of sponsoring the uprising in occupied Kashmir, and of providing training and cover to militants in the troubled valley. At one point, Pakistan came close to being placed on the State Department’s list of sponsors of terrorism, a designation that would have had far-reaching implications for the country had it come to pass.
By 2001, India’s policy of imposing a crushing isolation on Pakistan was finally bearing fruit when 9/11 came along and reversed it all. This was a big shock to the Indian foreign policy establishment, which had shouldered a tremendous cost in men and materiel for repression of the uprising in occupied Kashmir, under the hopes that pressure on Pakistan would eventually cause the uprising to die down. All those hopes were dashed once Pakistan became a superpower favourite again.
The Congress party had seen its fortunes sag throughout the 1990s, losing power to the BJP by the end of the decade. But in 2004, it scored a surprising victory at the polls and renewed its electoral strength again in 2009 by increasing its seats in the Lok Sabha from 153 to 206.
Yet trouble brewed behind this double movement in the early 2000s, which had seen the return to power of the Congress party in India and a reversal of Pakistan’s fortunes. This was when Modi made his appearance on the big stage of Indian politics with the Gujarat riots in 2002, cynically using communal hate and violence as a tool to grab power. Once in power, Modi unrolled a model of violent development, which fused rent-seeking alliances with billionaires at the federal level, with high levels of public expenditure on infrastructure projects to promote ports, power plants, luxury urban housing developments and more. This model of development rested on the ability to efficiently dispossess people and take land required for large-scale projects, high levels of government spending and a close, symbiotic relationship between wealthy elites, the party apparatus and the government machinery of India.
Fortunes changed following the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. The Congress party was at a loss for ideas on how to restart growth in India, and Musharraf’s growth bubble burst comprehensively while Pakistan’s troubles with the US mounted. As Pakistan sank once more into its pre-9/11 state of isolation coupled with a depleted economy, the Congress party hurtled towards its most stunning electoral defeat ever in 2014. That was Modi’s year, when he also brought this model of violent development as his party’s vision for achieving a final resolution of New Delhi’s long-running Kashmir problem.
Two ideas were central to this vision, and both have a pedigree in India’s policy conversation going back at least to the early 2000s. One was to revoke Kashmir’s special status granted under Article 370 of the Indian constitution. The second was to cast off the constraints of the Indus Waters Treaty. With both these done, the government would be in a better position to use public funds to initiate large-scale infrastructure projects through which to select winners and losers within Kashmir. The idea was to reward those who would play ball with the government, and crush those who wouldn’t.
These are the broad developments that imparted such inexorable momentum to the episodic return of stand-offs between India and Pakistan. Modi’s India wants to make Kashmir its own, regardless of the wishes of Kashmir’s inhabitants. Pakistan is determined to thwart this ambition, regardless of the cost it has to pay along the way. Neither side can win in this situation. Yet none can afford to lose either.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
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DAWN EDITORIAL: 08 May 2025
PLANES and bombs are not the end of it. New Delhi is also up to mischief on another front. This weekend, without prior intimation, which officials say it is bound to provide under the terms of the Indus Waters Treaty, India virtually blocked water from flowing into the Chenab in Pakistan, reducing water availability for crops this side of the border. Punjab irrigation officials said Pakistan’s waters were being used to fill up three Indian reservoirs with a total capacity of 1.2 MAF, and there was a possibility that the stored water would be released without warning, causing dangerous flooding downstream. “If they keep filling their dams and avert discharging, they may leave us without water for four to five days more,” an official remarked. Meanwhile, India had also started the process of augmenting the reservoir holding capacity at its Salal and Baglihar projects in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. A Reuters report stated that ‘reservoir flushing’ was underway at the two projects to enhance their capacity to hold water, and that if other dams also started doing the same, Pakistan’s water share could be adversely affected in the future. This, of course, is a serious situation that needs constant monitoring by Pakistan. The Chenab irrigates vast tracts of farmland in Punjab, and India’s actions are aimed at sabotaging Pakistan’s water and food security. If they continue to escalate, water disputes between the two nations have the potential to trigger a wider, more serious conflict in the future.
The Modi regime, whose judgment has been clouded by hubris ever since India’s economic clout started inviting international attention, lit a fuse after making the unilateral decision to ‘suspend’ the IWT. Its actions have placed the treaty’s status in uncertainty, at least for now. This is a dangerous game for New Delhi to be playing. Water is a lifeline for Pakistan’s economy, and any actions India takes to try to alter its supply in violation of the IWT will be taken as a provocation to war by Pakistan. Islamabad has made this clear. If India continues to push the boundaries of acceptability, Pakistan may soon face a situation where its options may be limited to kinetic measures. Climate change has presented the country with severe existential crises that it needs to overcome in order to protect the lives and livelihoods of its people. Any foreign act or aggression that imperils Pakistan’s waters and therefore the well-being of its people cannot be countenanced.
Without further ado, Pakistan needs to mount an aggressive legal challenge against India’s move to ‘suspend’ the IWT and either compel or convince it to reverse its decision. Diplomatic channels should continue to be utilised to prevent any serious violation of water-sharing agreements, which have the potential to place millions on both sides in peril. The IWT has survived wars and conflict over issues much more serious than the one manufactured most recently by New Delhi. It cannot be simply undone by one side over flimsy pretexts. India must be held to its commitments.
Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2025
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