Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday, May 6, that water from India that once flowed across borders will be stopped, days after suspending a key water treaty with arch-rival Pakistan. New Delhi has blamed Islamabad for backing a deadly attack on tourists on the Indian side of contested Kashmir last month, sparking a series of heated threats and diplomatic tit-for-tat measures.
Pakistan rejects the accusations, and the two nuclear-armed neighbors have exchanged nightly gunfire since April 24 along the de facto border in Kashmir, the militarized Line of Control, according to the Indian army.
Modi did not mention Islamabad specifically, but his speech comes after New Delhi suspended its part of the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty, which governs water critical to parched Pakistan for consumption and agriculture. "India's water used to go outside, now it will flow for India," Modi said in a speech in New Delhi. "India's water will be stopped for India's interests, and it will be utilised for India."
Pakistan has warned that tampering with its rivers would be considered "an act of war." But experts also pointed out that India's existing dams do not have the capacity to block or divert water, and can only regulate the timing of when it releases flows.
A day earlier, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres said relations between Pakistan and India had reached a "boiling point," warning that "now is the time for maximum restraint and stepping back from the brink" of war.
Islamabad on Tuesday accused India of altering the flow of the Chenab River, one of three rivers placed under Pakistan's control according to the now–suspended treaty. "We have witnessed changes in the river (Chenab) which are not natural at all," Kazim Pirzada, irrigation minister for Pakistan's Punjab province, told Agence France-Presse.
Punjab, bordering India and home to nearly half of Pakistan's 240 million citizens, is the country's agricultural heartland, and "the majority impact will be felt in areas which have fewer alternate water routes," Pirzada warned. "One day the river had normal inflow and the next day it was greatly reduced," Pirzada added.
In Pakistan-administered Kashmir, large quantities of water from India were reportedly released on April 26, according to the Jinnah Institute, a think tank led by a former Pakistani climate change minister. "This is being done so that we don't get to utilize the water," Pirzada added.