Weaponized hydrology: The geopolitics of the Salal Dam and the Indus Waters Treaty

The Indus Water Treaty (IWT) is viewed as one of the cornerstones of water diplomacy between transboundary countries, as the agreement functioned flawlessly for more than six decades without interruptions or defects.

- DR ARVIND KUMAR

In different periods of time, the agreement managed to maintain the joint management of transboundary water sources isolated from any political and military rivalry that existed between the two states. However, there came a time when this arrangement under the Indus Water Treaty become impossible. After the terrorist incident at Pahalgam in April 2025 which led to the deaths of twenty-six people, India decided to put the Indus Water Treaty in ‘Abeyance' or ‘temporary suspension’ citing Pakistan's support to state-sponsored terrorism, signaling that lower-riparian water security can no longer be insulated from Pakistan's conduct regarding cross-border terrorism.

Furthermore, India argues the that the treaty permitted India to utilise the Western Rivers, only for specified engineering was agreed upon in 1960, with changes in time, India aims to bring changes in design of its dams with modern run-of-the-river engineering which requires high sediment loads of Himalayan rivers.

The Salal Hydro Project on the River Chenab is the focal point of this change. India is employing the Salal project's facilities to obtain water resources that are protected under the Indus Waters Treaty because they had previous restrictions from the treaty’s implementation. New Delhi is changing regional hydro-political dynamics through its technical and strict treaty interpretation, which provide different meanings to storage capacity limits and run-of-the-river projects guidelines.

THE RIPARIAN ASYMMETRY: THE LEGAL AND TECHNICAL TRAP