LAHORE, Pakistan: While extremism or political instability normally make headlines when it comes to South Asia, the issue of water sharing deserves more attention. Water sharing between countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and India has become a source of growing concern with implications not only for domestic stability, but for regional stability as well. The United States has taken notice of this issue. In fact, a special report was recently prepared for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on avoiding future wars over water in South and Central Asia. The United States recognizes the importance of water-related issues in its bilateral relationships with South Asian countries and has an interest in resolving these issues not only for reasons stemming from foreign policy goals, such as trying to quell terrorism and insurgencies, but also in an effort to protect its own long-term security interests in the region. The Senate report, “Avoiding Water Wars: Water Scarcity and Central Asia's Growing Importance for Stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, places particular emphasis on the need to resolve water disputes between the two nuclear armed states of the region. The need is all the more pressing now that the longstanding Indus Water Treaty between India and Pakistan, which was brokered in 1960 and equally divides the six rivers in the shared Indus System of Rivers between the two countries, is coming under increasing stress. A breakdown in the treaty could have serious ramifications for broader regional stability. Proposals to expand irrigated land and the drive to meet energy demands through hydropower development are putting new strains on the sharing of water by India and Pakistan. Continued water mismanagement and increased inefficiencies in existing irrigation systems compound the problem. As the effects of climate change become more pronounced, agrarian populations in both countries, which are dependent on monsoons and glacial melt for irrigation, will be profoundly affected. Any reduction in water flows will only serve to magnify the prevailing distrust. The implications, of course, can be far-reaching for relations between various ethnic groups. Water scarcity is known to spark ethnic or clan warfare. Large landowners have also been known to usurp the water rights of poorer farmers in connivance with irrigation department officials. The burden of water collection in poor, water-stressed communities also invariably falls on women and their daughters, thereby becoming a major cause for girls dropping out of school. India has an ambitious dam-building agenda, and claims it is strictly adhering to the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty. The US Senate report, however, admits that the cumulative effect of these dam-building projects could give India the ability to store enough water that would in essence limit the supply to Pakistan at crucial moments in the growing season. India has squarely rejected these findings. Instead, it continues to suspect that Pakistan is exacerbating the conflict in Kashmir to secure control over water resources there. For its part, Pakistan is unhappy that India is helping Afghanistan to build a dam on the Kabul River and developing a hydroelectric project, which could also have serious repercussions on water flow in Pakistan. US involvement in this process to encourage Afghanistan and Pakistan's joint management of the Kabul River Basin may help lessen such growing mistrust. The US Senate report aptly recommends the need to focus on conservation instead of trying to increase water supply. Providing basic technical input to all concerned countries in the form of gathering benchmark data could in turn help improve water management and reduce overall pressure on shared water resources. The United States can further assist by holding river basin dialogues and establishing community-level water management projects on shared watersheds. Given that natural water flows remain oblivious to artificial demarcations such as national boundaries, water sharing can readily exacerbate existing tensions to the point of outright conflict, especially in an environment where hostility already exists between neighboring states. The United States can play a positive role in averting such a disaster, by nudging an otherwise reluctant neighboring state to cooperate regionally and devise more comprehensive water-sharing arrangements in a geo-strategically vital part of the world – one that is already plagued by enough violence. Syed Mohammad Ali is a development practitioner and columnist for The Express Tribune in Pakistan. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
