- India defends treaty suspension citing Pakistan’s terrorism, obstruction.
- Pakistan’s repeated attacks, blocking efforts, eroded India’s faith.
- PM Modi affirmed terror and water cannot coexist.
India’s Ambassador to the United States, Vinay Kwatra, has defended New Delhi’s decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance, arguing that Pakistan’s long record of cross-border terrorism and obstruction left India with little choice.
Writing in an opinion piece for Newsweek, Kwatra said Pakistan has repeatedly used threats of war against India to divert attention from its domestic challenges. Kwatra also recalled the 2012 terrorist attack on the Tulbul Navigation Project and blocking India’s initiatives to renegotiate the treaty in light of six decades of technological change. He said that with this Pakistan eroded India’s faith.
“Repeated attacks on Indian project sites, including the 2012 terrorist attack on the Tulbul Navigation Project completely prevented India from exercising its rights under the treaty. Pakistan also consistently blocked India’s initiatives to renegotiate the treaty in light of six decades of technological change, which would have let India develop its hydropower potential. Bit by bit, Pakistan eroded India’s faith that it could exercise its rights under the treaty, or hope for a better one suited to today’s realities,” Kwatra said in a publication.
Kwatra said India suspended the treaty a day after the April 22, 2025 Pahalgam terror attack, in which Pakistan-based and Pakistan-trained terrorists linked to the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba killed 26 people, including 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen. He described it as the deadliest terror attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
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Explaining the origins of the Indus Waters Treaty, Kwatra wrote that the 1960 agreement allocated control of the three eastern rivers to India and the three western rivers to Pakistan. While India received access to around 20% of the basin’s waters, Pakistan received nearly 80%, an imbalance that, he argued, restricted development in parts of India for decades despite New Delhi continuing to honour the agreement.
‘Pakistan Dismantaled Goodwill, Frienship’
According to Kwatra, Pakistan responded not with goodwill but with repeated wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999, along with decades of cross-border terrorism, including the attacks on the Indian Parliament, Mumbai, Pathankot, Uri, Pulwama and Pahalgam. He claimed that more than 40,000 civilians in India have been killed due to Pakistan’s sustained terror campaign.
The ambassador also accused Pakistan of systematically delaying and obstructing Indian hydroelectric projects that were permitted under the treaty through prolonged dispute-resolution mechanisms. He further alleged that terrorist attacks on Indian project sites, including the 2012 attack on the Tulbul Navigation Project, prevented India from fully exercising its rights under the agreement.
Kwatra said Pakistan also resisted India’s attempts to modernise or renegotiate the treaty to reflect technological changes over the past six decades, gradually eroding India’s confidence in the agreement.
Highlighting the treaty’s preamble, which refers to a “spirit of goodwill and friendship”, Kwatra argued that Pakistan spent half a century dismantling that goodwill and friendship.
Pakistan spent decades destroying the Indus Waters Treaty with wars, terrorism, and endless obstruction—long before India put it in abeyance.https://t.co/pJObWJcbRX @DDNewslive @airnewsalerts @MEAIndia @IndianDiplomacy
— Amb Vinay Mohan Kwatra (@AmbVMKwatra) August 1, 2026
‘Water, Blood Cannot Flow Together’: Kwatra Cites PM’s Position
Rejecting calls for renewed India-Pakistan dialogue, Kwatra cited Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s position that “terror and talks cannot go together”, adding that “water and blood cannot flow together.”
Kwatra also dismissed Pakistan’s claims that India was acting as a “water aggressor”, arguing that the country’s water shortages stem primarily from domestic mismanagement. He wrote that only about 40% of the water Pakistan receives reaches its farms, with significant losses during transit and large volumes flowing unused into the sea.
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Concluding his article, Kwatra said Pakistan should focus on improving its own water management instead of blaming India. He added that if Islamabad genuinely seeks India’s cooperation on bilateral issues, it must first dismantle the terror infrastructure operating from its soil.
