WATER A SOURCE OF TENSION BETWEEN INDIA AND PAK

A feud over water between India and Pakistan is threatening to derail peace talks between the two neighbors.

The countries have harmo- niously shared the waters of the Indus River for decades. A 50-year-old treaty regulating access to water from the river and its tributaries has been viewed as a bright spot for In- dia and Pakistan, which have gone to war three times since 1947.

Now, the Pakistanis com- plain that India is hogging wa- ter upstream, which is hurting Pakistani farmers down- stream. Pakistani officials say they will soon begin formal ar- bitration over a proposed Indi- an dam. At a meeting that started Sunday, Pakistan raised objections to new Indi- an dam projects on the Indus River and asked for satellite monitoring of river flows.

“Water I see emerging as a very serious source of tension between Pakistan and India,“ said Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, in an interview Friday. He said he has raised the issue with Indi- an Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

A senior Indian government official denied India is violat- ing the treaty. He blamed Pa- kistan's water shortage on changing weather patterns and the country's poor water man- agement. He called the stri- dent rhetoric from Pakistani officials a “political gim- mick...designed to place yet one more agenda item in our already complex relationship.“ Indian officials declined com- ment on the record.

The latest dispute revolves around India's plans to build a 330-megawatt hydroelectric power project on the Kishen- ganga River, a tributary of the Indus. India says it is well within its rights to build the dam. The project has been on the drawing board since the late 1980s and is expected to cost about $800 million.

Pakistan says New Delhi's plans to divert the course of the river will reduce its flow by a third in the winter. That would make it unfeasible for Pakistan to move ahead with its own plans for a hydroelec- tric dam downstream.

Pakistan wants to put the Kishenganga project before an arbitration panel--the first time that mechanism of the treaty will have been used. If India agrees, a seven-person court of arbitration would in- clude two members appointed by each country, and three outsiders. India hasn't yet re- sponded formally to the pro- posal, according to the Pakis- tan delegation to the meeting.

“We're already a water- stressed country,“ Jamaat Ali Shah, Pakistan's Indus waters commissioner, said ahead of this week's meeting. India's construction of new dams is “aggravating the stresses.“

The water dispute comes as the relationship between the nuclear-armed neighbors is at an inflection point. India last month invited Pakistan to dis- cuss the resumption of regular peace talks, and the two countries' foreign secretaries met in Delhi February 25. A water squabble could upset those peace efforts.

That would deal a major blow to Indian Prime Minister Singh, who views engagement with Pakistan as the best way to contain terrorism. Mr. Singh wants Pakistan's aid in bring- ing to justice Pakistan-based militants that New Delhi be- lieves carried out the Novem- ber 2008 attacks in Mumbai, a bloody siege that killed 166 people.

Further deterioration of re- lations between New Delhi and Islamabad would also be a setback for Washington's ef- forts to stabilize the region.
Pakistan has told the U.S. that tensions with India on its east- ern border over the disputed territory of Kashmir have pre- vented it from cracking down more aggressively on Taliban and al Qaeda leaders directing the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Islamist groups in Pakistan have taken up the water issue as a new focus. “If our govern- ment doesn't act to resolve this issue then the people will take it in to their own hands. If water doesn't flow in to these rivers, then blood will,“ said Hafiz Khalid Waleed, the polit- ical affairs chief of Jamaat-ud- Dawah, an Islamic charity. In- dia and others call the charity a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba, the militant group it says or- chestrated the Mumbai terror- ist attacks in November 2008.
Mr. Waleed denies any link to terrorism, calling it “American propaganda.“

Water scarcity is a growing political issue across the globe, from the Middle East to the U.S. West. South Asia's wa- ter politics date back to Brit- ain's partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947, when newly created nations India and Pakistan wrangled over how to divide resources.

The Indus River, whose wa- ters Britain had harnessed through a vast system of irriga- tion canals, was a crucial life- line to farmers in the Punjab region stretching across both countries. But India and Pakis- tan were fighting over control of Kashmir, where several In- dus tributaries begin.

After years of tense negotiations, India and Pakistan sign- ed the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 with the help of the World Bank. As part of the treaty--which is widely viewed by water experts as a model of how water conflicts can be managed--each side got unre- stricted use of three rivers and rights to use the others for nonconsumptive purposes such as flood control, naviga- tion and bathing. India was granted limited agricultural usage of Pakistan's rivers, plus the right to build hydroelectric projects, as long as they don't store or divert large amounts of water.

The treaty provides for bu- reaucrats appointed by both governments to meet regular- ly, exchange data, and resolve disputes. Commissioners have held more than 200 site in- spections and meetings since 1960, even during times of war.

Yet Pakistan's rows with In- dia have intensified as its wa- ter situation has worsened over the years. Water availabil- ity in Pakistan has fallen 70% since the early 1950s to 1,500 cubic meters per capita. It is expected to reach the 1,000-cubic-meter level con- sidered officially “scarce“ by international standards in 25 years, according to a report last year by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Pakistani officials acknowl- edge their water woes aren't caused by India's damming of rivers alone. Major reservoirs are filling with sediment picked up by the rivers on their routes to the sea. Canals are aging and breaking down.
The World Bank says soil ero- sion and poor irrigation are sapping roughly 1% from Pa- kistan's Gross Domestic Prod- uct growth.

Skeptics in India say Pakis- tan is simply looking for a scapegoat as it struggles to manage its internal water poli- tics.

The especially arid province of Sindh, for example, blames the powerful upstream prov- ince of Punjab for consuming too much.

“Their water management is in terrible shape, and it's con- venient to put the onus on In- dia,“ said G. Parthasarathy, a former Indian envoy to Pakis- tan.

But Pakistani officials say New Delhi's actions are ex- acerbating a precarious situa- tion.

This year the Pakistan prov- ince of Punjab--the political heartland of the nation and a major producer of wheat, rice, maize and sugar cane--is facing unprecedented water shortages. At harvest time in Mandi Bahauddin, an area in the north of Punjab province of relatively prosperous farm- land, the wheat still grows waist-high.

But farmers here complain that yields and incomes have dropped by a third in the past five years because of water shortages. In the past, canals used to supply water for irriga- tion year-round. They are now empty for about four months each year. That forces villagers to pump groundwater, which is fast turning brackish and causing diseases like hepatitis, said Tariq Mehmood Allowa- na, a local farmer and member of the provincial assembly.

In the past, the area's only problem was regular flooding.
India's dams stopped this, causing a dearth of water instead, says Mr. Allowana, who owns 25 acres of wheat fields.
The farmer represents the Pa- kistan Peoples Party of the late former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Farmers say they have stopped cultivating rice--a water-intensive crop--except for personal use. Nearby, more than half of the Chenab river bed has become a dusty plain where children play with the flow reduced to a trickle.

“India is engaged in an eco- nomic warfare against Pakis- tan. If the problem persists for another five years the whole area will become barren,“ said Mr. Allowana, as a group of farmers nearby filled irrigation channels from groundwater supplies using a diesel-fueled pump.

Over the years, tensions have built as Pakistan has ob- jected to the size and technical design of various Indian pro- jects. India says it has 33 In- dus-related hydrological pro- jects at various stages of im- plementation, and all have been contested in one way or another by Pakistan. India also says it has yet to make use of its limited rights to store water on Pakistan's rivers or use it for limited irrigation.

“We've found there's a pat- tern in Pakistan of raising technical issues ad nauseam to stall a project or delay a proj- ect indefinitely,“ the senior In- dian official said Friday.

In 2005 Pakistan raised is- sues with the Baglihar dam, an Indian power project on the Chenab river--one of those al- lotted to Pakistan--saying it would store too much water upstream and reduce down- stream flow to Pakistan.

The countries agreed in 2007 to let the World Bank appoint an independent expert, who ruled that India had to make minor modifications to the dam, such as lowering its height. Pakistan now contends the dam, which began opera- tions in 2008, is reducing the flow of the Chenab below lev- els stipulated in the treaty. In- dia denies this.

Pakistan wants Washington to play a mediating role with India--in the water dispute and wider issues like the Kash- mir conflict. The U.S. is push- ing for tighter relations with Pakistan as it steps up pres- sure on the Taliban in Afghan- istan but has to balance this with its close ties to India. For now, the U.S. is treading care- fully, offering Pakistan stepped-up economic aid and military hardware supplies.

Pakistan raised the water is- sue in Washington during an official visit last week. Secre- tary of State Hillary Clinton has signaled that Washington isn't interested in mediating on water issues.

A State Department spokes- person pointed to an interview Mrs. Clinton recently did with a Pakistani news channel in which she said it would be “sensible“ to stick to the Indus Waters Treaty for resolving disputes.

The Indian projects that Pa- kistan says are draining its wa- ter resources are primarily on Indus tributaries in Kashmir.
Some experts say the water is- sue is a back door way for Is- lamic militants to push their political agenda regarding Kashmir.

“They're saying, `We must liberate Kashmir to save our water,' “ said B.G. Verghese, a veteran journalist who has studied water issues closely and is a visiting professor at the Center for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank.

--wsj@livemint.com