Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday Pakistan will not get water from rivers over which India has rights. He threatened, “Pakistan will have to pay a heavy price for every terrorist attack … Pakistan’s army will pay it. Pakistan’s economy will pay it,” during an event in Rajasthan.
Pakistan’s Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan responded to the situation in an interview with Reuters, stating, “Pakistan is willing to talk about or to address anything, any concerns they may have.” He stressed that any discussions on the treaty “would have to take part under the terms of the treaty,” underscoring Pakistan’s position that the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) remains legally binding.
In the wake of escalating tensions between Pakistan and India following an attack in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) on April 22, Pakistan has condemned India for holding the treaty in ‘abeyance’. The treaty guarantees water for nearly 80% of Pakistan’s agriculture from three rivers that flow from India, making it a critical lifeline for the country’s farming sector.
On the treaty’s suspension by India last month, Awan said, “As far as Pakistan is concerned, the treaty is very much operational, functional, and anything which India does, it does at its own cost and peril as far as the building of any hydroelectric power projects are concerned.”
Despite the heightened rhetoric, the ceasefire agreed on May 10 has largely held. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said there have been no recent exchanges of fire and “there has been some repositioning of forces accordingly.”
However, he reiterated India’s stance on counterterrorism, stating, “The (military) operation continues because there is a clear message … that if there are acts of the kind we saw on April 22, there will be a response. We will hit the terrorists. If the terrorists are in Pakistan, we will hit them where they are.”
A day earlier, at least five people, including three schoolchildren, were martyred and several others injured in a suicide attack targeting a school bus in Khuzdar early Wednesday morning.
The military’s media wing stated that “three innocent children and two adults have embraced Shahadat” and multiple children have sustained injuries in the “cowardly and ghastly attack planned and orchestrated by the terrorist state of India and executed by its proxies in Balochistan”.
The ISPR added that India has unleashed its proxies to spread terror and unrest in Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhawa through such heinous and cowardly acts after miserably failing on the battlefield.
The top military commanders declared that “no one can coerce Pakistan through the use or threat of force” and that the hostile elements trained and financed to incite chaos in the country will be decimated.
The declaration was made at the 270th Corps Commanders’ Conference chaired by Army Chief Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir at the GHQ in Rawalpindi on Thursday.
Earlier this week, DG ISPR Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said Pakistan is a peace-loving country, but any act of Indian aggression will be met with a swift and decisive response.
Speaking in an interview with Anadolu Agency, the chief military spokesperson said that Pakistan would not accept any form of regional dominance. “Pakistan will never bow down to Indian hegemony,” he said, adding that “the sooner they [India] realise this, the better it will be for regional peace and the world.”
