Can India stop Pakistan’s river water — and will it spark a new war?

al jazera ^ | 07/09/2025 | Abid Hussain

[BenLurkin]

The mighty Indus River, the 12th longest in the world, originates from Mount Kailash in Tibet at an elevation of 5,490 metres (18,000 feet).

It flows northwest, cutting through the scenic yet disputed Kashmir region, before entering Pakistan and travelling some 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) south to the Arabian Sea.

In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the Indus is joined by its western tributaries – the Swat and Kabul Rivers – as it carves through mountainous terrain.

Entering the fertile plains of Punjab, the river’s five eastern tributaries — the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej — meet the Indus.

These rivers flow through Indian-administered Kashmir and other Indian states before entering Pakistan.

This geographic dynamic, with India as the upper riparian state and Pakistan the lower state, has fed into long-standing distrust between the neighbours.

The April 2025 Pahalgam attack marked a breaking point. But signs of the treaty’s fragility had emerged long before that.

In September 2016, following an attack on an Indian Army base in Uri, a town in Indian-administered Kashmir, that killed at least 18 Indian soldiers, India accused the Jaish-e-Muhammad, a Pakistan-based armed group that has carried out multiple attacks on Indian soil, of being behind the Uri strike.

Pakistan swiftly denied any involvement of its government, but India’s then-Home Minister Rajnath Singh branded Pakistan a “terrorist state” that supported “terrorists and terrorism groups”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, then in his first term leading the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party, declared, “Blood and water cannot flow at the same time”, amid growing calls within India to stop the flow of water in Pakistan.

[Steven Scharf]

Interesting article on the waters of the region.

It amazes me the extent that other parts of the world utilize water for many uses including hydro electric generation and managing agriculture. Yet here in America, Hydro has been deemed evil and is opposed as a form of hydro electirc generation. Dams are removed to allow he fish to run.

As my friend Robin would say, stupid, stupid stupid.

[bgill]

Can’t decide which to side with. On one hand muslim Pakistan needs the water but on the other hand, India has horribly polluted water.

[Dixie Yooper]

If the size of the reservoir is going to be near the size of the 3 Gorges Dam Reservoir in China, expect Global Warming, Climate Change and Climate Disruption and 2007 all over again due to man made carbon emissions...

[Organic Panic]

It would not break many hearts if Pakistan was vaporized.

[Verginius Rufus]

The Swat? Babe Ruth was known as the Sultan of Swat.

"Punjab" means "five rivers"--the "punj-" part is cognate with the Greek word for five, "pente." Punch, the drink, is so called because it was made from five ingredients.