In contrast, New Delhi has never used such a language against Pakistan, a rival that has constantly carried out sub-conventional warfare and imposed three wars on India.

Pakistan has reacted strongly to India’s decision to put the 1960 Indus Water Treaty (IWT) in abeyance in May 2025. More importantly, New Delhi has retained its position, which Pakistan seems not to have expected.

The rulers in Pakistan might have thought that the decision taken by New Delhi would be temporary and meant to cool down the public anger over the Pahalgam terror attack in which 26 innocent civilians were gunned down by Pakistan-backed terrorists in April 2025.

India’s position and its strong defence of putting the treaty in abeyance have given a clear message to Islamabad that the IWT was no longer inviolable. India has not only defended its decision strongly but has also offered a legal basis for its decision. In this way, New Delhi has got on the nerves of the military establishment in Pakistan.

The point is not what the rulers and several commentators say about India’s decision; the real issue is what they can do about it. Not much, to be clear.

It is a well-established international practice that the upper riparian states need to be mindful of the needs of the lower riparian states. And India has been overly conscious and considerate about that. Otherwise, besides signing the treaty and allowing Pakistan to use the majority of the waters of the western three rivers—the Indus, Chenab, and Jhelum—New Delhi never thought of using the treaty to react to Pakistan’s three unprovocative wars that it imposed on India.

Pakistan has no locus standi to challenge India’s decision. One point that the rulers in Pakistan and several commentators make to question India’s position is the legality of India’s decision to put the IWT in abeyance. First and foremost, there is no precedent and no legal binding that a treaty or agreement is eternal. If that had been the case, there would not have been amendments or clauses in agreements meant to address issues that pop up from time to time. More importantly, what if the situation and the circumstances change? If a treaty favours one signatory at the cost of the other, would that be fair to the essence of an agreement? Of course not.

Furthermore, Pakistan should be thankful that New Delhi has not taken an irrational and reckless position. Like in Pakistan, the provinces are ready to adopt punitive water policies to deprive each other of water. Punjab is accused of using the waters of the Indus River and depriving Balochistan and Sindh of their share. These two provinces are up against Punjab for the latter’s decision to divert water to irrigate barren land, affecting the lower riparian areas.

To quote Chief Minister of Punjab Maryam Nawaz, “If Punjab wants to construct canals for its water, why are you bothered? It is Punjab’s water. It belongs to the people, farmers and fields of Punjab.” Maryam Nawaz is just the chief minister of a province of Pakistan. Still, she minces no words in underlining the reality that Punjab, since it is the most powerful province of the country, can overlook the concerns and reservations of the weak and lower riparian provinces.

In contrast, New Delhi has never used such a language against Pakistan, a rival that has constantly carried out sub-conventional warfare and imposed three wars on India. In fact, India has been considerate about the implications of such a decision and its generosity towards the common people of Pakistan, despite the hostile policy of the country’s military establishment, is well known. Not only did it not disrupt the flow of the water towards Pakistan, but it also diplomatically raised its concerns about the changing circumstances of the IWT and the need for its renegotiation.

That should be enough to refute the claim of Islamabad that the water was being “weaponised”. Had that been the policy, New Delhi could have done that a long time ago. The point is that the behaviour of the military establishment remains detrimental towards India’s security. And having made all sincere efforts to convince Islamabad to refrain from pursuing such a policy, the only option was to remind Islamabad of its vulnerability.

Notwithstanding the hollow claims of several leaders in Pakistan, war is and will be devastating for the country. The rulers in Pakistan may claim that it has nothing to lose, but India is focused on development and progress. It doesn’t want to be dragged into a war, although it can easily win one by making Pakistan pay a heavy price, but a lot of resources will be consumed by such an action.

For Pakistan, on the other hand, conflict and wars have sustained the military establishment in the country. Since the brief conflict in May 2025, the country’s military has overly dominated the country’s domestic and foreign policy. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has been reduced to an honorary position, standing behind Field Marshal Asim Munir to nod his head to the latter’s decisions. Sad, but reality.

Be that as it may. The reality is that New Delhi has made it clear that Pakistan cannot claim normalcy on one front and remain involved in anti-India subversive activities on the other. If internally Punjab can make a claim over the waters that flow through it to the lower areas of Pakistan, why can New Delhi not explore the option of putting the IWT in abeyance to build pressure on Pakistan to take concrete measures against its sponsored groups that have been active in threatening India’s security?

If the military establishment believes that India cannot do that, then it is living in a fool’s paradise. India has options to force Pakistan to revisit its policy of sponsoring anti-India terrorist groups. New Delhi still prefers diplomatic ways to send a message across the border.

The decision to put the IWT in abeyance is a step towards achieving that goal. And India is fully entitled to abrogate the treaty if Pakistan doesn’t revisit its behaviour or refuses to acknowledge India’s concerns.

If history has anything to teach us, Pakistan is known for making misguided policy decisions. Often, such short-sighted policies have backfired. Whether it’s support to the Islamist radicals like Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) or the Afghan Taliban, to mention just two. Its support for the TTP has led to military confrontations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And the situation remains tense, which potentially can deteriorate if better sense does not prevail.

Pakistan is in no position to claim having the upper hand, whether militarily, diplomatically or legally, to challenge India’s decision on the IWT. All it can do is carry out sub-conventional warfare that, in turn, can provide New Delhi with a strong casus belli((a Latin term meaning “cause for war” or “justification for war). Where will that end? Islamabad should know that better. In no way can it inflict harm on India that can be compared to the potential damage that India can unleash on Pakistan.

On the issue of IWT, Pakistan has no case, no clout. It, therefore, is wise and sensible for the country to behave as a responsible state and stop supporting anti-India terrorist groups. That would help it save a lot of money for development. The rulers of Pakistan have the responsibility to act sensibly and in the interests of the people of their country.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

The international community has, for too long, accepted Pakistan’s victim narrative at face value. The reasoning has often been geopolitical.

Every time the world confronts Pakistan with evidence of its support for terrorism, it responds with the same script. It is a victim of terrorism, not a sponsor. Its neighbours are out to defame it. The groups operating from its soil are rogue actors, beyond state control. The script has worn thin. Operation Sindoor, in May 2025, demolished it.

The Indian airstrikes on the night of May 6 to 7, 2025, did not target shadowy hideouts in remote tribal regions. They targeted Bahawalpur, a city of nearly a million people in central Punjab, well within Pakistan’s settled and policed heartland. They targeted Muridke, the sprawling Lashkar-e-Taiba complex on the outskirts of Lahore. They struck nine sites in total, four in Pakistan proper and five in Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The locations told their own story. These were not camps that Pakistan had failed to find. These were camps that Pakistan had built.

The Family Business of Terror

Consider the case of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the group whose Bahawalpur headquarters India struck on May 7. Jaish was founded in 2000 by Masood Azhar, a man Pakistan released from Indian custody in December 1999 in exchange for hostages on a hijacked plane. According to multiple accounts cited by Pakistani journalists and Western researchers, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) directorate paraded Azhar through Pakistan after his release on a fundraising tour, and helped him stand up the new outfit.

Pervez Musharraf, who served as Pakistan’s president from 2001 to 2008, admitted in a 2019 interview that Jaish-e-Mohammed had carried out attacks in India on the instructions of Pakistani intelligence. This was not an Indian allegation. This was the former military ruler of Pakistan acknowledging that Pakistan’s spy agency had directed terror operations against a neighbouring country.

Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group whose Muridke complex India also struck, has a similar profile. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies has documented that Lashkar conducts its attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai siege, with the consent and support of the ISI. David Coleman Headley, the Pakistani-American operative who scouted the Mumbai targets, testified that he met with six different ISI officers during his time with Lashkar. American investigators identified one of them, known only as Major Iqbal, as having provided 25,000 dollars in cash and direct operational guidance for the attack that killed 166 people.

What the Strikes Revealed

If Jaish and Lashkar were really rogue outfits operating outside Pakistani state control, the strikes of May 7 should have produced confused and uncertain reactions. Pakistan should have struggled to identify what had been hit, who had died, and why. Instead, the response was immediate and revealing. Pakistan’s military leadership knew exactly what had been targeted, because the targets were on Pakistan’s books in all but name.

In September 2025, a senior Jaish commander named Masood Ilyas Kashmiri appeared at the group’s annual Mission Mustafa conference and openly admitted that Masood Azhar’s family had been killed in the Bahawalpur strikes. Ten members of the family died, including Azhar’s sister, her husband, a nephew, a niece, and five children. Four close aides also died. The location of the strike was Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah, the headquarters of Jaish-e-Mohammed, sitting comfortably inside Pakistani territory, with a UN-designated terrorist living openly within its walls.

The picture this paints is unambiguous. Masood Azhar, listed as a global terrorist by the United Nations Security Council since May 2019, was not in hiding. He was at home, with his family, in a complex protected by the Pakistani state. His brother Abdul Rauf Asghar, also a UN-designated terrorist and the operational head of Jaish, was reportedly killed in the same strike. Pakistan’s posture of plausible deniability has rested for decades on the fiction that men like these are difficult to find. India’s strikes proved that the only people who found them difficult to find were Pakistan’s own authorities.

The Cost of the Charade

The international community has, for too long, accepted Pakistan’s victim narrative at face value. The reasoning has often been geopolitical. Pakistan was a frontline state in the Cold War. Pakistan was a partner in the war on terror. Pakistan held nuclear weapons that demanded careful handling. Each of these arguments contained a fragment of strategic logic. None of them justified the systematic protection of men who killed civilians in Indian cities and villages.

The cost of this charade has been borne by India and by the broader region. Pakistan’s continued sponsorship of terror groups has poisoned the entire South Asian neighbourhood. It has prevented the development of normal trade and travel relations. It has consumed resources that could have built schools and hospitals on both sides of the border. And, most tragically, it has cost thousands of innocent lives across decades of attacks that Pakistan’s intelligence services helped plan, fund, and execute.

Operation Sindoor changed the equation. By striking Bahawalpur and Muridke, India made plain what had always been true. The terrorist infrastructure attacking India operates from inside Pakistan, with the protection of the Pakistani state. The terrorist leadership lives in Pakistani cities, raises families in Pakistani neighbourhoods, and runs operations from Pakistani buildings. The fiction of state distance from these activities has collapsed.

The world now has a choice. It can continue to accept the Pakistani script of victimhood, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Or it can finally treat Pakistan as what it has long been: a state that uses terrorism as an instrument of policy, and that pays a price every time it does. India has decided which path it will follow. The international community must now decide which path it can credibly continue to ignore.

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.