Pakistan and India: Back to being frenemies again?

As nuclear missiles go on display in Islamabad at a military parade and American F-16 and Chinese JF17 fighter jets scream overhead on March 23 to showcase the country’s martial muscle as a deterrent to its nuclear neighbor India on Pakistan’s national day, a more contrarian but engaging environment will be rolling out at a government meeting room in New Delhi.

That’s when Pakistani and Indian commissioners of the bilateral Indus Water Commission will be meeting after a gap of two years to discuss the status of the Indus Water Treaty between the two countries that aims to agreeably share Himalayan waters that serve as a lifeline for large swathes of territories of both countries. The commissioners are supposed to meet annually in alternate capitals, but the coronavirus pandemic prevented the last meeting in the spring of 2020 in Pakistan.

While meatier technical issues will be at hand in the Delhi meeting to tackle the protracted dispute of share and management of waters for upstream India and downstream Pakistan, the talks themselves epitomize the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel in terms of bilateral relations. Many are seeing this as hostile neighbors upgrading their relationship status from enemies to frenemies. They’ve never been full friends.

The meeting is the first official bilateral engagement between the two countries since the worst peacetime attack on a military target in India’s history in Pulwama in Kashmir in 2019 that killed over 40 soldiers. India promptly blamed the attack on Pakistan, much to the latter’s chagrin and vehement denials. 

The worsening relations after Pulwama eventually led to the first peacetime air raid on Pakistani territory by India a few days later. Pakistan downed the Indian Air Force jet that struck and captured its pilot who was handed back to India a few days later as a gesture of goodwill leading to a tense but peaceful cold war. Until now.

The water dispute is serious enough to warrant multiple rounds of negotiations to resolve, so it is a welcome development for the two largest South Asian neighbors to prioritize resolving it. The Indus Water Treaty was brokered by the World Bank in 1960 to allow for a mechanism to share the waters of the mighty Indus river and its major five tributaries originating in Indian-administered Kashmir, flowing into Pakistani and Indian Punjab regions, and further down into the south in Sindh and meeting the Arabian Sea.

The treaty theoretically gives control over the waters of the three ‘eastern rivers’ – the Beas, Ravi and Sutlej, comprising about 20% of the Indus water volume – to India, and three ‘western rivers’ – the Indus, Chenab and Jhelum, comprising about 80% – to Pakistan. The treaty allows India use of unutilized water for irrigation purposes for alternative uses such as power generation.

The long-running dispute stems from the upstream control of the eastern rivers at the origin controversially by India that has often resulted in flooding downstream in Pakistan or, as is increasingly happening due to speeding climate change, withholding water that is frequently resulting in drought in Pakistan. Pakistan is also alarmed at dams being built on the rivers upstream by India that Islamabad says is subversion of the treaty and amounts to formalizing a ‘kill switch’ on the Indus with potentially devastating consequences on food security and water supplies for urban and agriculture use.

A better part of this century has been spent by Pakistan requesting access to Indian territory upstream to inspect dams and opposing their designs and continued India denial. Whether the latest round of talks will change the status quo remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, the confirmation of talks in themselves represent the biggest détente between Pakistan and India in the last three years. In the interregnum the two countries came close to a fourth war and complicating their other major dispute – political status of Kashmir, claimed in full by both sides – after India politically merged the part of Kashmir controlled by it into its federal union. This led to one of the harshest bilateral spats in recent years resulting in downgraded diplomatic ties and recall of each other’s ambassadors.

The Delhi water talks come close on the heels of an agreement between the military leaderships of both countries on sticking to mutual ceasefire along the ‘Line of Control’ that divides Kashmir between them – itself a major booster by way of confidence building measures. Even if no breakthrough is expected in the Delhi water talks, the fact that the nuclear neighbors will be talking bodes well for a desirable outbreak of bonhomie after several years of diplomatic scorns and scowls. It is about time.

- Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.

Twitter: @adnanrehmat1