Brussels, May 9 (IANS) Pakistan’s military establishment for decades has regarded the sponsorship of terrorism as a “low-cost tool”, facing no meaningful accountability.
By placing the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance following last year’s April 22 Pahalgam terror attack carried out by a Pakistan-based terror group, India has brought the agreement itself into the strategic “cost calculus”, effectively dismantling that insulation, a report said on Saturday.
Writing for ‘European Times’, Dimitra Staikou, a Greek lawyer, writer, and journalist, emphasised that water and terrorism can no longer be treated as separable domains.
“The choice is now binary: abandon proxy warfare and restore predictability, or persist and accept that a critical national lifeline is subject to political decisions in New Delhi. The abeyance is reversible; the signal is not,” she stressed.
According to the expert, from a legal standpoint, India’s move to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance may be seen as consistent with principles of international law, particularly under the doctrine of fundamental change of circumstances (rebus sic stantibus), enshrined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.
“The profound transformation of both the hydrological environment—driven by climate change and accelerated glacial loss — and the geopolitical context — marked by the sustained use of cross-border terrorism — undermines the foundational assumptions upon which the 1960 agreement was built. At the same time, Pakistan’s refusal to engage meaningfully in negotiations over treaty modification, despite formal notifications by India in 2023 and 2024, reinforces the argument that the principle of good faith, which underpins treaty obligations, has been eroded,” Staikou stated.
“Under these conditions, the choice of abeyance — rather than outright termination — constitutes a proportionate and reversible legal response that preserves the possibility of renegotiation while rebalancing the distribution of rights and obligations between the parties,” she added.
Staikou stressed that India’s position represents a “calibrated exercise of sovereign right” rather than an “arbitrary breach of international commitments”.
She noted that water can no longer be treated as an assured entitlement but a contingent variable — capable of rewarding compliance, penalising destabilising behaviour, and influencing long-term strategic calculations.
Rejecting Pakistan’s framing of the abeyance as an “act of war” or a violation of international law, she said such claims must be viewed within this broader context.
“The appeal to international arbitration, including efforts at The Hague, obscures a fundamental point: Pakistan was offered sustained bilateral engagement on treaty reform and declined. A state that refuses negotiation in periods of stability cannot credibly claim procedural injustice in moments of crisis,” Staikou argued.
The writer noted that the abeyance of the IWT serves dual purpose – imposing tangible costs on Pakistan’s continued reliance on terror groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, while creating political space for a future agreement better aligned with contemporary demographic, environmental, and strategic realities.
–IANS
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