Chairman PPP, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari addressing an international seminar on Indus Water Treaty in Islamabad warned the world of the grave nature of suspending the Indus Water Treaty unilaterally by India and vowed to save Pakistan from the existential threat by any means.
Chairman Bilawal on his keynote speech said that we meet at a grave hour, at a time when the world has been reminded that a waterway is not merely geography, it is power, commerce, food, fuel and life. The world saw that the Strait of Hormuz become the centre of confrontation between Iran and the USA. Pakistan’s mediation through the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding attempted to open that artery of the global economy. Iran and the USA agreed to the ceasefire. Closing of Hormuz was the weaponization of a waterway. Just as no ceasefire and no peace could be achieved between the US and Iran with the Strait of Hormuz shut, similarly, how can any ceasefire between India and Pakistan hold without the Indus Water Treaty being restored, Chairman Bilawal asked. What is true for the Hormuz is true for the Indus, with even greater intensity, as Indus carries the lives of nations. India had announced its intention to abandon the Indus Water Treaty as part of their unjustified assault on Pakistan last summer. It is a war that is internationally recognized as one that India lost. Even India’s greatest allies cannot help but marvel at the number of planes downed by Pakistan. Pakistan emerging victorious has reshaped the geopolitics in the region. The concept of propping up India as a net security provider in the region has been abandoned and the world has moved on.
However, I must caution, while Pakistan has stuck to the ceasefire, India has not, Chairman Bilawal stated. There were clear and explicit terms in the ceasefire which were to be discussed in a meeting at a neutral location where all the friction points were to be addressed. In the meantime, we were to return to normal, which entailed India returning to its obligations under the IWT. However, India has not done so. It is a question for Pakistan to answer whether we still abide by a ceasefire that leaves far too many questions unanswered. Just as one could not imagine warring parties agreeing to peace without a free-flowing Strait of Hormuz, how can Pakistan be expected to sustain a ceasefire when India continues to pose an existential threat? Let there be no ambiguity in Islamabad, New Delhi, Washington, Beijing, London and the United Nations, this is not a technical dispute, Chairman Bilawal stressed. This is not a clerical clash between commissioners, or a matter of paperwork, hydrology or administrative issues, but the weaponization of water. The IWT was not given as a favor to Pakistan, it was a solemn international settlement brokered in the shadow of partition and the rivers of Punjab and Sindh could have not been left on the mercy of anger. The World Bank states clearly that the treaty allocates the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum and Chenab) to Pakistan and eastern rivers to India, while allowing each side limited use of rivers allocated to the other. When India says it will place this treaty in abeyance, it is not merely suspending meetings, but threatening survival. What is Indus to Pakistan? It is not a river on the map, it is our bread, cotton, wheat, fields of Sindh, orchids of Punjab, waters of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, channels of Balochistan. It is our farmer at dawn, our mothers drawing water, children eating roti, our worker in the mill and our prayer before the harvest.
To cut the Indus is not to pressure a government, but to threaten a people, Chairman Bilawal said. Pakistan has over 200 million souls no state, no PM, no army, no court, no parliament, no political party, and no generation has the right to stand silent while the lifeline of those souls is placed under the shadow of coercion. We must speak with the seriousness that this situation demands. Pakistan must treat every step towards the strangulation of its waters as a national security assault, not merely as a diplomatic irritant, or a footnote in a foreign ministry brief, or another file to be moved from one desk to another. It must be treated as an attack on the foundations of the state.
This does not mean that Pakistan seeks war, Chairman Bilawal stated. We do not seek war, we have buried too many sons and seen too much blood in this region. We know the price of adventurism, and the tragedy of miscalculation. Peace is not surrender, restraint is not paralysis, diplomacy is not silence and patience is not permission. If India wants the world to take its threat seriously, Pakistan must compel the world to take our survival seriously. Our message must be clear, any move to block, divert, manipulate or potentially politically control Pakistan’s rightful waters will not be treated as routine engineering. Every survey, tender, canal proposal, dam design or every concrete step towards changing the flow guaranteed to Pakistan must be treated as a strategic warning signal. It must trigger the state’s response, be it legal, economic, political, diplomatic, informational, national security preparedness or even military response.
Chairman Bilawal said that Pakistan should not allow India to climb the ladder of coercion while we remain trapped issuing statements of concern. The strangulation of water is an existential threat, and we cannot remain silent while it is prepared, financed, designed, tendered and normalized. A nation does not wake up only when the riverbed is dry, a nation wakes up when the first stone is moved to sabotage our future. It is only rational to ask what are we doing in terms of military preparedness as India continues to pursue such measures. Pakistan must not make a single move that concedes India’s illegal position. We must not behave as though India’s decision is fait accompli. We must not build policy on the assumption that the treaty is dead. We must not rush to create downstream substitute dams in a way that tells the world India has succeeded, and now Pakistan is adjusting. We must not give the impression that we were victorious on the battlefield but have surrendered on the banks of the river. Pakistan’s position must remain immovable, the treaty lives, and Pakistan’s rights live. The Indus does not become India’s instrument because it has discovered the language of abeyance. Projects and dams already approved before India’s unilateral decision should continue on their own merit. Pakistan must complete what it has already planned, we must strengthen our dams, reservoirs, barrages, canals and flood management systems because Pakistan needs water security regardless of India’s aggression. Let us be precise, there is a difference between strengthening Pakistan and accepting India’s blackmail. There is a difference between national resilience and diplomatic surrender, there is a difference between preparing for scarcity and legitimizing theft. We must move on a war footing for water conservation. We must modernize irrigation, reduce waste in canals and invest in drip irrigation as well as smart agriculture. We must make every drop count not because India has the right to steal our water, but because Pakistan has a duty to respect its own future.
We must explore every source outside the scope of the treaty, Chairman PPP said. Desalination of our coasts, water recycling for our cities, climate-resilient water storage, regional water cooperation and even long-term feasibility of bringing water from Central Asia through negotiated corridors and sovereign agreements. Let engineers dream, let planners calculate, let diplomats negotiate and let the state act with imagination, Chairman Bilawal said. Do not confuse resilience with retreat, the Indus Water Treaty must be defended in every forum, be it the World Bank, United Nations, international courts, arbitrary bodies, friendly capitals, whether Muslim, western, African or Asian. The world now needs new law. Straits used for international navigation are governed by transit passage principles. Ships and aircrafts enjoy a right of passage that shall not be impeded. International water law also rests on the equitable and reasonable utilization, prevention of significant harm and prior notification of measures that may adversely affect other states sharing water courses. International humanitarian law recognizes that water installation and irrigation systems are indispensable for civilian survival. The ICRC has warned that the deprivation of water is a method of warfare and is strictly prohibited. Yet, the age we are entering demands more.
Chairman Bilawal said that we need a new international convention against the weaponization of waterways, it must apply to maritime chokepoints like the Hormuz and transboundary rivers like the Indus. It must prohibit the use of civilian water dependency as a coercive instrument. It must create emergency injunctions against unilateral treaty suspensions, and impose automatic international scrutiny on projects that threaten downstream survival. It must recognize that water coercion is not merely unfriendly conduct, but aggression by other means. The 20th Century feared the bomb, the 21st Century must also fear the faucet controlled by a hostile hand, Chairman PPP stated.
Addressing the Indian neighbors, Chairman Bilawal said that they cannot build greatness on the thirst of another people. You cannot call yourself a civilization while threatening another civilization’s river. You cannot speak of democracy while placing millions under a hydrological siege. You cannot invoke development by turning water into a weapon. The Indus is older than both our flags. It has seen empires come and go, it has seen kings, colonizers, conquerors, generals, viceroys, PMs and presidents. They all passed, the river remained and Pakistan will remain.
We must understand the nature of the conflict before us. It is not confined to one front and is not only the matter of borders, Pakistan is being targeted through proxies, propaganda, economic pressures, attempts at diplomatic isolation, hybrid warfare, politics of fear and now through the politics of water. This is war by other means. When a state seeks to isolate you, destabilize you, blame and bleed you, then threaten the river that sustains your people, you are already in a war of national survival, Chairman Bilawal said. Whether guns are firing every day or not is not the only test of war. The test is whether the life of the nation is being targeted.
Let us rise above the parties, provinces, factions and petty quarrels that have so often weakened us, Chairman PPP urged. The Indus does not belong to one government, party or province. It belongs to Pakistan and to history. Let there be unity in the Parliament and clarity at the GHQ, let there be resolve in the foreign office. Let there be urgency across the government, he said. We do not ask for charity, but demand law. We do not ask for sympathy, but demand justice. We do not ask for permission to live but assert our right to life. Pakistan must say to the world that the Indus cannot be held hostage, Chairman Bilawal said. The treaty cannot be suspended by arrogance, the river cannot be turned into a weapon and the thirst of children cannot become the policy of a neighboring state. Pakistan must say to India, do not mistake our divisions for weakness, restraint for fear, our appeal to law for lack of resolve. We have survived partition, war, terror, floods, dictatorships, sanctions, conspiracies, betrayal and we are still here. The Indus made us patient, fertile and stubborn. If anyone believes Pakistan will surrender the Sindhu, they do not know Sindh, Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Kashmir or Gilgit Baltistan. They do not know the people who have lived by these rivers for thousands of years. We want peace, but peace with dignity. We want coexistence but not submission.
From this seminar, this city and this moment onwards, let the message be that Pakistan will defend its water, people, treaty, sovereignty and future. It is in public literature on Pakistan’s deterrence posture, economic strangulation has long been treated as one of the gravest thresholds and stopping the Indus has been understood as falling within this category. When India weaponizes water, it is not merely violating a treaty but pushing South Asia towards the edge of strategic catastrophe. If we see an attack on our rivers as a military assault, we must respond militarily as well. Let the world understand the danger of what India has done, no power however large, arrogant or intoxicated could impose an existential defeat upon Pakistan. A nation does not defend its life at the final moment but the first warning, Chairman Bilawal said.
The Indus is not a bargaining chip or a weapon to be placed in India’s hands. It is a lifeline of Pakistan, and any attempt to turn it into a noose must be treated as a threat to the survival of our state. This is the message that Pakistan must deliver to India and the world. Peace in South Asia will not be preserved by pretending coercion is harmless, but only when India understands that the rivers of Pakistan cannot be touched without shaking the foundations of regional stability. If the international community does not build new law against the weaponization of waterways, then every downstream nation will one day become hostage to the ambitions of an upstream power. Pakistan must therefore lead the argument not as a beggar, victim or state pleading for sympathy, but warning the world that the path India has opened is one towards catastrophe. The treaty lives, Pakistan’s rights live, and Pakistan will not surrender the Sindhu, Chairman PPP said.
Water strangulation destroys people by hunger, thirst, crop failure, disease, migration and social collapse. Therefore, Pakistan must not allow the world to hide behind technical language. India will call it a ‘treaty dispute’, ‘administrative abeyance’, ‘hydropower’, ‘development’ or an engineering survey. A dam is not merely a dam when it is built on the throat of a nation. Pakistan has publicly described attempts to stop or divert its rightful use of water as an act of war. A nation that waits until the riverbed is dry has waited too long. Every step towards the weaponization of Indus must produce a corresponding elevation in Pakistan’s national response. We do not seek war, but must recognize war when it is being prepared against us, Chairman Bilawal said. Deterrence survives only when the adversary understands that every movement towards the red line carries consequences, risks and national resistance.
India placed the Indus Water Treaty in abeyance as part of the Operation Sindoor. Pakistan has treated this suspension as unlawful by preparing legal action and warning that water diversion will be an act of war. Let the world hear this from Pakistan, we will not allow India to redefine aggression as engineering, coercion as development, treaty violation as national security, or to place its hand on the throat of the Indus and as Pakistan to behave as though nothing has happened. The Indus is not a river, but the civilizational artery of Pakistan. To threaten the Indus is to threaten Pakistan itself. The message to India is clear, it cannot suspend the treaty and expect normal relations. The world has just seen what happens when a waterway becomes a weapon. The Strait of Hormuz is called the artery of the global economy because energy flows through it, the Indus is more than that. This is why the world needs new law, a water way that sustains civilians cannot be converted into a weapon. The law must recognize that in the age that we are climate-stressed, water aggression is as destabilizing as military aggression.
Chairman PPP said that Pakistan must understand that we need to win the legal, political, diplomatic, climate and the deterrence case. In order to achieve this, national unity is integral. The Indus belongs to the farmer of Sindh, grower of Punjab, worker of Karachi, family of Balochistan, mountains of Pakhtunkhwa and is the future of every Pakistani child. As long as the Sindhu flows through the body of Pakistan, we will not bow. Chairman Bilawal concluded his address by raising the slogan of “Marsoon Marsoon, Sindhu na Desoon (We will die, but not give up the Indus)”
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