Does this actually mean anything because the Indians are just going to go back to their original position that they don’t recognize the jurisdiction of this court over the presiding treaty.
Fine, Thank you very much says GoI. IIRC they have already said that the treaty is terminated and a new one can be discussed after PakGov ends terrrorism as state policy.
It’s very convenient that you just read the sentence that supports your position and then stopped.
The very next sentence says: “The Court examined the potential grounds upon which India could suspend or terminate the treaty, including the grounds cited by India in its public statements. In a unanimous decision, the Court found that none of these grounds could justify suspension or termination of the treaty”.
This is a Pakistani victory no matter how you try to spin it.
Treaties require mutual consent of both parties. Pretending they are some magic silver bullet is …unrealistic. Besides If Pakistanis were so good with following treaties, there shouldn’t be a JnK dispute in the first place, since the ascension was already signed.
Is there any credible argument that the infra that India is building is intentionally malicious? As far as I understand, India’s utilisation of the western rivers is a trivial fraction of its allotment, and whatever they are doing is for silt management to extend the longevity of the dam infra. Could it theoretically be weaponized? People are saying yes, but that’s kind of trivial in so far as bad faith can be imputed anywhere arbitrarily.
The powers that be don’t want India to have even the appearance of any counter vailing non kinetic leverage against cross border terrorism. Rest is poetry.
Open question for Indians imo, (1) are freezing water treaties fair game even if there’s no intent to weaponize? only in the most extreme of circumstances? (2) did the state of affairs cross that threshold? This belongs somewhere quite high on the diplomatic escalation ladder.
I don’t see net the upside of India being so demonstrative about its changing views on the treaty, if she just wanted to remove delay and friction for infra projects, gaslightling/steamrolling would have been even less controversial and caught fewer international headlines. This is a great opportunity for Pakistan to deflect criticism. Most disappointing would be if the calculus deemed it for domestic symbolic consumption.
My priors on this, btw, are that while Pakistan is highly adversarial and bad faith, relations are not unsolvable in 25 years, so diplomacy still matters, not because of nuclear threat, but because they will always be an exploitable wedge by the wider world.
Pakistan initiated that this time around, did they not? Another interesting, but telling diplomatic maneuver, was in 2009 when they banned commercial overflight for Srinagar to UAE routes so as not to normalize the status of the dispute. While it could read as principled to their domestic audience, its really a kind of blackmail that impacts the Kashmiri people exclusively, so as to perpetuate the idea that they are in a kind of Gaza-like open air prison.( BTW, Delhi to UAE flights were permitted overflight concurrently) They were successful in as much as they made the route unviable. Irony is that direct access to UAE would have accelerated interaction of Kashmiris and Pakistanis. Instead, in the meanwhile, Srinagar airport (despite how small the city is), has surged its domestic connectivity to the point that it would by a fair margin be the busiest domestic airport in Pakistan, handling more domestic than Karachi and Lahore combined.
More than weaponize there is a need to renegotiate it. Nehru gave them everything, and we got nothing in return. Salal for example has lost 95% of it’s water storage capacity due to catastrophic siltation caused by Pakistan’s intransigence.
India can store 3.6 MAF of water on western rivers, of which we have built nothing out of goodwill and treaty being badly negotiated re solving siltation.
India can irrigate 1.34 million acres of land with the treaty but we only use 7-800,000 acres.
The real red line is attacking Pakistan when it has a real war with Afghanistan or Iran. Pakistan did not do it in 1962 India-China war. We remain in their debt.
Saying this is for domestic symbolic consumption would be incorrect. Modi is consistent and predictable: invited Pakistani investigators after Pathankot, sent in raiding parties after Uri, aerially bombed border areas and PoK after Pulwama, Op Sindoor after Pahalgam.
Similarly, Shahpur Kandi paperwork was complete but the final nail was Pulwama and the dam was completed by 2024. The Beas-Chenab link tunnel will happen. Some tenders for the were flaoted on May 20th on NHPC website but were abruptly retracted on May 23rd. It seems environment ministry, tribal welfare ministry, and local gram sabha related paperwork is not in place yet.
There is construction activity happening in the Akhnoor water lift project and also expanding the Ranbir canal headworks.
Re ‘exploitable wedge’ : they have been like this for 80 years now. Nothing is going to change. No diplomacy is going to work, accept it, move on, pay back in kind.
Thanks, very informative. Based what you’ve said, if the case for India’s development of hydrological infrastructure stands on its own merits, why link it to cross-border terrorism? It almost diminishes the standalone merits to a 3rd party.
Re ‘exploitable wedge’ : they have been like this for 80 years now. Nothing is going to change. No diplomacy is going to work, accept it, move on, pay back in kind.
I’m admittedly less pessimistic here. I would agree the same type of diplomacy fails, and we probably need emotionally detached non-punjabis handling things. If the last 80 years of estrangement have proven anything its that geographic ecology of trade can’t be easily rewired. Their isnt much of a choice for them but to center economic relationship in south asia. The younger generation has less baggage, and we ought to not create another round of it if we can.
Let us get some perspective first on some projects that have been a victim of Pakistan’s law-fare: Salal had a design storage capacity (pre 96% silting caused by Pakistanis) of 0.01 MAF, Baglihar had 0.025 MAF, Kishanganga had 0.015 MAF, and under construction: Ratle has 0.019 MAF, while Pakal Dul has 0.10 MAF.
There is also Tulbul navigation project. This is a non-power infrastructure project. India attempted to build a barrage to regulate the water level of Wular Lake to keep the Jhelum River navigable for local commerce during winter. Estimated to be 0.3 MAF.
For putting things into perspective, India is entitled to 3.6 MAF storage of western river’s water. That is about the size of the reservoir of Sardar Sarovar dam on Narmada. There are caveats to this storage, but the bottom line is Pakistan has been pricking India for far too long with IWT.
After IWT abeyance, it took three years and > Rs 800 crore to partially fix Salal whose sluice gates had to be dug out and cut open and a new bypass tunnel is being made.
“if the case for India’s development of hydrological infrastructure stands on its own merits, why link it to cross-border terrorism?”
Because no matter the merits Pakistan never listens and creates drama. On its part, India continues to gaslight and steamroll too.
With Kishanganga, while the court was deliberating, India accelerated construction. In 2013, PCA in the Hague delivered a partial award allowing India to divert the water, largely because India’s work was already significantly advanced. India fully completed the dam while the World Bank temporarily paused dispute proceedings, outracing Pakistan’s legal objections.
With Baglihar, Pakistan raised technical objections regarding the dam’s gated spillways and asked the World Bank to appoint a Neutral Expert. Rather than halting construction, India kept pushing work forward. The Neutral Expert’s 2007 ruling mandated only minor design modifications, allowing India to quickly complete and operationalize the dam with lower sluice gates
Right now with the treaty in abeyance, India is going full steam on Kwar (540 MW), Sawalkote (1856 MW) , Ratle(850 MW), Kiru(624 MW), and Pakal Dul (1000 MW). All of them are run of the river and minimal water storage but with low sluice gates
I read that geologically the Aswan Dam is a disaster as it is in a high evaporation area whereas the Ethiopian Highlands are natural cool dams..
Geography is critical; presumably the best dams for the Indus are in Tibet or closer to the highland source.. which could then regulate everything downstream..
“I’m admittedly less pessimistic here. I would agree the same type of diplomacy fails, and we probably need emotionally detached non-punjabis handling things.”
Modi may be boastful but he is hardly a Punjabi. Jaishankar was born and largely raised in Delhi but I doubt Tam-Brams can go native in one generation. I could be wrong, he did marry a Japanese woman.
I agree that Punjabis have oversized influence re foreign policy. Since the start of K-insurgency, 1990-2006 were especially bad wrt the ethnicity of the FM, but since then SM Krishna and Pranab Mukherjee had 6 year of time to show their non-Hindi/non-Punjabi chops even with a soft hearted Punjabi PM. Not a great run for either of them.
“If the last 80 years of estrangement have proven anything its that geographic ecology of trade can’t be easily rewired.”
One type of game ends, another one opens. Wouldn’t it be great if we get to make peace when our hand is the strongest? Differential will only growing in the near future. Every Pakistani misstep, every misadventure, every Munir, buys India another 2-3 years of lead.
“Their isnt much of a choice for them but to center economic relationship in south asia.”
That is for them to decide. They have stopped transit trade, infact much of other trade too, with Afghanistan which was their captive market. My way or Karakoram highway …
“The younger generation has less baggage, and we ought to not create another round of it if we can.”
I agree, I am tired of this. Why over burden cardiologists on both sides ?
We will find out limits of Afghan-India love when the Chabahar-Zahedan rail line starts operation, btw track laying is complete. Khaf-Herat connection between Iran and Afghanistan will be complete in late 2026. Too much in the ‘geopolitical’ tinfoil hat territory for me. But this is an interesting development. Iranians are serious operators, Punjabi-Mojahirs run from battle.
>Every Pakistani misstep, every misadventure, every Munir, buys India another 2-3 years of lead.
Very true. The peacenik in me pines for a EU style coexistence with Pak. The realist in me recognizes that its a distant dream as of now, and in the interim, we should be celebrating the fact that Pakistanis continue submitting to the likes of Muneer.
The Pakistani Military is looking at the CCP and trying to re-fashion itself in that image – Muneer sees himself as a Pakistani Xi who has seized the reins and restructured Chinese governance as he sees fit.
The problem for Muneer is that Xi was able to pull this off on the foundations that were built for him over decades. PakMil has no such luxury, quite the opposite. Pakistan today stands on the quicksand accumulated by the multi-decade missteps of the very organization that Muneer spearheads.
Very true. The peacenik in me pines for a EU style coexistence with Pak. The realist in me recognizes that its a distant dream as of now, and in the interim, we should be celebrating the fact that Pakistanis continue submitting to the likes of Muneer.
I think we are heavily overestimating the economic value a nation like Pakistan represents to India in terms of trade or investment. Even with the most optimistic estimates it will create trade at around 10 billion dollars while requiring India to moderate or give up on several strategic objectives. Meanwhile even just a minor addition to the EU FTA could generate that amount of value for the country in 5-10 years. Therefore, what advantage does an EU like arrangement even have for the Indian state. For me in an ideal world we would just have GSP+ equivalent status for each other reciprocally and call it a day that way we don’t have to compromise on any strategic objectives.
Its not about economic value. I think that large majority of Pakistanis are just sheep – not all of them are anti-hindu anti-India bigots. And I do think they are our ….estranged kin. Heck, if the planet is … Vasudev Kutumb, then the residents along the Indus certainly are.
But all of this… high minded stuff takes a backseat to overt hostility and terrorist violence.
“large majority of Pakistanis are just sheep” Agreed.
“not all of them are anti-hindu anti-India bigots”
Obviously not all of them but this is just hopes and prayers. Atleast a. very large and powerful minority (majority?) are like this.
“And I do think they are our ….estranged kin”
And Afghans are Pakistan’s estranged kin, and Tajiks/Uzbek are the Pashtun’s estranged kin, … and so on the overlaps go. Same-same but different. We should move on, only interact if beneficial for us. If they hurt us, take something from them.
Our great power ambitions were compromised the day Congress refused to cooperate in WW2. Our aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines will never go out of Indian ocean for stretching legs. Now we just have some limited strategic objectives remaining, like capturing markets, tying rival economies up, Dhurandhar-ing, maybe take land if Pakistan makes big mistakes.
Is there anything that China asks of Pakistan, that it would not do happily if it hurts India. Foreign air bases, naval bases, trade, law-fare, on ground intelligence, skirmish, large war, domestic unrest, insurgency, … Pakistan has gone above and beyond even at the cost of their sovereignty.
There is no way around relegation. We should accept our lower status, bide our time and enjoy playing the game at hand. Anyways, the India-Pakistan military wars are surprisingly civilized, it is not like it costs a lot in lives or …
“Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership.”
— Deng Xiaoping
The US was a distant 4th great power prior to WW1. We simply have to hide our capacities and bide our time. There will be a day when Chinese internal contradictions will manifest themselves. But that day isn’t coming for at least a decade imo.
The bigger issue is that without those contradictions surfacing materially, we are not going to catch up or even tread water in our relative disparity with the CCP.
EU style coexistence is like dreaming Delhi is London or Mumbai is NY. It is not. We are at a different point on the civilization development, decades behind on infra, centuries behind in experiences and capacity, …
Munir is only 57 and fit, a long life of humiliation ahead … Pakistanis dig ‘The Dictator’ series, the fifth season is on air.
Pakistanis being a agrarian society feel the pain on this one. Linking it to terrorism is just making up a causus beli. There is emphasis on cooperative spirit, friendship, and goodwill in the very text of IWT. None exist between the two.
Third parties will always try to wriggle themselves in and become the Sarpanch. China does not accept ICJ’s judgement on South China Sea re China-Phillipines. Pakistan toppled entire elected government of Afghanistan. Strong do what they can …
Treaties cannot exist in perpetuity. The court can provide any ruling it wishes. Water management will remain a marginal issue on the international stage. If a richer country like Egypt couldn’t get Ethiopia sanctioned India is surely not going to be affected. At its worst it could cause issues with international lines of credit for financing dams.
There was a previous treaty on the Nile but it was imposed on the Ethiopians with them not even being considered a party to it. Egypt demanded that the treaty be taken as a precedent to any future treaty negotiated on the Nile to ensure its own share of water was guaranteed. There’s an entire cold war happening in East Africa today with Ethiopia, Somali Land, UAE, Israel vs Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Turkey. None of these military escalations, threats, treaty violations stopped Ethiopia from constructing the GERD.
Does this actually mean anything because the Indians are just going to go back to their original position that they don’t recognize the jurisdiction of this court over the presiding treaty.
‘can only be either suspended or terminated’.
Fine, Thank you very much says GoI. IIRC they have already said that the treaty is terminated and a new one can be discussed after PakGov ends terrrorism as state policy.
It’s very convenient that you just read the sentence that supports your position and then stopped.
The very next sentence says: “The Court examined the potential grounds upon which India could suspend or terminate the treaty, including the grounds cited by India in its public statements. In a unanimous decision, the Court found that none of these grounds could justify suspension or termination of the treaty”.
This is a Pakistani victory no matter how you try to spin it.
Sure sure. And what exactly did Pakistan ‘win’?
GoI already communicated its refusal to act on this news….
GoI can refuse to act on whatever they like.
The point is that there are no conditions under which this treaty can be suspended or terminated.
That’s the judgement of an international court.
Treaties require mutual consent of both parties. Pretending they are some magic silver bullet is …unrealistic. Besides If Pakistanis were so good with following treaties, there shouldn’t be a JnK dispute in the first place, since the ascension was already signed.
Dear all,
I am removing any inflammatory comments by Kabir. Do not respond otherwise you will be redlisted as well.
Kabir right now we are being gracious and surgically editing your comments.
Stop Trolling otherwise it will be mass deletion.
Cease and desist.
That sums it up.
Is there any credible argument that the infra that India is building is intentionally malicious? As far as I understand, India’s utilisation of the western rivers is a trivial fraction of its allotment, and whatever they are doing is for silt management to extend the longevity of the dam infra. Could it theoretically be weaponized? People are saying yes, but that’s kind of trivial in so far as bad faith can be imputed anywhere arbitrarily.
The powers that be don’t want India to have even the appearance of any counter vailing non kinetic leverage against cross border terrorism. Rest is poetry.
Open question for Indians imo, (1) are freezing water treaties fair game even if there’s no intent to weaponize? only in the most extreme of circumstances? (2) did the state of affairs cross that threshold? This belongs somewhere quite high on the diplomatic escalation ladder.
I don’t see net the upside of India being so demonstrative about its changing views on the treaty, if she just wanted to remove delay and friction for infra projects, gaslightling/steamrolling would have been even less controversial and caught fewer international headlines. This is a great opportunity for Pakistan to deflect criticism. Most disappointing would be if the calculus deemed it for domestic symbolic consumption.
My priors on this, btw, are that while Pakistan is highly adversarial and bad faith, relations are not unsolvable in 25 years, so diplomacy still matters, not because of nuclear threat, but because they will always be an exploitable wedge by the wider world.
I think it is obvious that putting IWT in “abeyance” was for domestic political reasons.
Many ruling party politicians have spoken about cutting off Pakistan’s water.
It allows the State to appear hypermasculine.
It’s not like India even has the technical ability to cut off Pakistan’s water.
Also the airspace thing is a pretty big deal..
A day may come when Afghanistan too closes it’s airspace for Pakistan. We are getting there.
Pakistan initiated that this time around, did they not? Another interesting, but telling diplomatic maneuver, was in 2009 when they banned commercial overflight for Srinagar to UAE routes so as not to normalize the status of the dispute. While it could read as principled to their domestic audience, its really a kind of blackmail that impacts the Kashmiri people exclusively, so as to perpetuate the idea that they are in a kind of Gaza-like open air prison.( BTW, Delhi to UAE flights were permitted overflight concurrently) They were successful in as much as they made the route unviable. Irony is that direct access to UAE would have accelerated interaction of Kashmiris and Pakistanis. Instead, in the meanwhile, Srinagar airport (despite how small the city is), has surged its domestic connectivity to the point that it would by a fair margin be the busiest domestic airport in Pakistan, handling more domestic than Karachi and Lahore combined.
Excellent comment- yes Pakistan has a habit of cutting its nose to spite its face..
More than weaponize there is a need to renegotiate it. Nehru gave them everything, and we got nothing in return. Salal for example has lost 95% of it’s water storage capacity due to catastrophic siltation caused by Pakistan’s intransigence.
India can store 3.6 MAF of water on western rivers, of which we have built nothing out of goodwill and treaty being badly negotiated re solving siltation.
India can irrigate 1.34 million acres of land with the treaty but we only use 7-800,000 acres.
The real red line is attacking Pakistan when it has a real war with Afghanistan or Iran. Pakistan did not do it in 1962 India-China war. We remain in their debt.
Saying this is for domestic symbolic consumption would be incorrect. Modi is consistent and predictable: invited Pakistani investigators after Pathankot, sent in raiding parties after Uri, aerially bombed border areas and PoK after Pulwama, Op Sindoor after Pahalgam.
Similarly, Shahpur Kandi paperwork was complete but the final nail was Pulwama and the dam was completed by 2024. The Beas-Chenab link tunnel will happen. Some tenders for the were flaoted on May 20th on NHPC website but were abruptly retracted on May 23rd. It seems environment ministry, tribal welfare ministry, and local gram sabha related paperwork is not in place yet.
There is construction activity happening in the Akhnoor water lift project and also expanding the Ranbir canal headworks.
Re ‘exploitable wedge’ : they have been like this for 80 years now. Nothing is going to change. No diplomacy is going to work, accept it, move on, pay back in kind.
Thanks, very informative. Based what you’ve said, if the case for India’s development of hydrological infrastructure stands on its own merits, why link it to cross-border terrorism? It almost diminishes the standalone merits to a 3rd party.
I’m admittedly less pessimistic here. I would agree the same type of diplomacy fails, and we probably need emotionally detached non-punjabis handling things. If the last 80 years of estrangement have proven anything its that geographic ecology of trade can’t be easily rewired. Their isnt much of a choice for them but to center economic relationship in south asia. The younger generation has less baggage, and we ought to not create another round of it if we can.
Let us get some perspective first on some projects that have been a victim of Pakistan’s law-fare: Salal had a design storage capacity (pre 96% silting caused by Pakistanis) of 0.01 MAF, Baglihar had 0.025 MAF, Kishanganga had 0.015 MAF, and under construction: Ratle has 0.019 MAF, while Pakal Dul has 0.10 MAF.
There is also Tulbul navigation project. This is a non-power infrastructure project. India attempted to build a barrage to regulate the water level of Wular Lake to keep the Jhelum River navigable for local commerce during winter. Estimated to be 0.3 MAF.
For putting things into perspective, India is entitled to 3.6 MAF storage of western river’s water. That is about the size of the reservoir of Sardar Sarovar dam on Narmada. There are caveats to this storage, but the bottom line is Pakistan has been pricking India for far too long with IWT.
After IWT abeyance, it took three years and > Rs 800 crore to partially fix Salal whose sluice gates had to be dug out and cut open and a new bypass tunnel is being made.
“if the case for India’s development of hydrological infrastructure stands on its own merits, why link it to cross-border terrorism?”
Because no matter the merits Pakistan never listens and creates drama. On its part, India continues to gaslight and steamroll too.
With Kishanganga, while the court was deliberating, India accelerated construction. In 2013, PCA in the Hague delivered a partial award allowing India to divert the water, largely because India’s work was already significantly advanced. India fully completed the dam while the World Bank temporarily paused dispute proceedings, outracing Pakistan’s legal objections.
With Baglihar, Pakistan raised technical objections regarding the dam’s gated spillways and asked the World Bank to appoint a Neutral Expert. Rather than halting construction, India kept pushing work forward. The Neutral Expert’s 2007 ruling mandated only minor design modifications, allowing India to quickly complete and operationalize the dam with lower sluice gates
Right now with the treaty in abeyance, India is going full steam on Kwar (540 MW), Sawalkote (1856 MW) , Ratle(850 MW), Kiru(624 MW), and Pakal Dul (1000 MW). All of them are run of the river and minimal water storage but with low sluice gates
I read that geologically the Aswan Dam is a disaster as it is in a high evaporation area whereas the Ethiopian Highlands are natural cool dams..
Geography is critical; presumably the best dams for the Indus are in Tibet or closer to the highland source.. which could then regulate everything downstream..
“I’m admittedly less pessimistic here. I would agree the same type of diplomacy fails, and we probably need emotionally detached non-punjabis handling things.”
Modi may be boastful but he is hardly a Punjabi. Jaishankar was born and largely raised in Delhi but I doubt Tam-Brams can go native in one generation. I could be wrong, he did marry a Japanese woman.
I agree that Punjabis have oversized influence re foreign policy. Since the start of K-insurgency, 1990-2006 were especially bad wrt the ethnicity of the FM, but since then SM Krishna and Pranab Mukherjee had 6 year of time to show their non-Hindi/non-Punjabi chops even with a soft hearted Punjabi PM. Not a great run for either of them.
“If the last 80 years of estrangement have proven anything its that geographic ecology of trade can’t be easily rewired.”
One type of game ends, another one opens. Wouldn’t it be great if we get to make peace when our hand is the strongest? Differential will only growing in the near future. Every Pakistani misstep, every misadventure, every Munir, buys India another 2-3 years of lead.
“Their isnt much of a choice for them but to center economic relationship in south asia.”
That is for them to decide. They have stopped transit trade, infact much of other trade too, with Afghanistan which was their captive market. My way or Karakoram highway …
“The younger generation has less baggage, and we ought to not create another round of it if we can.”
I agree, I am tired of this. Why over burden cardiologists on both sides ?
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcVU2oihvw_/?igsi=MTZoeXFxc3lqem9nZA==
Afghanistan’s favourite country is India because India is enemy with Pakistan..
We will find out limits of Afghan-India love when the Chabahar-Zahedan rail line starts operation, btw track laying is complete. Khaf-Herat connection between Iran and Afghanistan will be complete in late 2026. Too much in the ‘geopolitical’ tinfoil hat territory for me. But this is an interesting development. Iranians are serious operators, Punjabi-Mojahirs run from battle.
Very true. The peacenik in me pines for a EU style coexistence with Pak. The realist in me recognizes that its a distant dream as of now, and in the interim, we should be celebrating the fact that Pakistanis continue submitting to the likes of Muneer.
The Pakistani Military is looking at the CCP and trying to re-fashion itself in that image – Muneer sees himself as a Pakistani Xi who has seized the reins and restructured Chinese governance as he sees fit.
The problem for Muneer is that Xi was able to pull this off on the foundations that were built for him over decades. PakMil has no such luxury, quite the opposite. Pakistan today stands on the quicksand accumulated by the multi-decade missteps of the very organization that Muneer spearheads.
I think we are heavily overestimating the economic value a nation like Pakistan represents to India in terms of trade or investment. Even with the most optimistic estimates it will create trade at around 10 billion dollars while requiring India to moderate or give up on several strategic objectives. Meanwhile even just a minor addition to the EU FTA could generate that amount of value for the country in 5-10 years. Therefore, what advantage does an EU like arrangement even have for the Indian state. For me in an ideal world we would just have GSP+ equivalent status for each other reciprocally and call it a day that way we don’t have to compromise on any strategic objectives.
Its not about economic value. I think that large majority of Pakistanis are just sheep – not all of them are anti-hindu anti-India bigots. And I do think they are our ….estranged kin. Heck, if the planet is … Vasudev Kutumb, then the residents along the Indus certainly are.
But all of this… high minded stuff takes a backseat to overt hostility and terrorist violence.
“large majority of Pakistanis are just sheep”
Agreed.
“not all of them are anti-hindu anti-India bigots”
Obviously not all of them but this is just hopes and prayers. Atleast a. very large and powerful minority (majority?) are like this.
“And I do think they are our ….estranged kin”
And Afghans are Pakistan’s estranged kin, and Tajiks/Uzbek are the Pashtun’s estranged kin, … and so on the overlaps go. Same-same but different. We should move on, only interact if beneficial for us. If they hurt us, take something from them.
Our great power ambitions were compromised the day Congress refused to cooperate in WW2. Our aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines will never go out of Indian ocean for stretching legs. Now we just have some limited strategic objectives remaining, like capturing markets, tying rival economies up, Dhurandhar-ing, maybe take land if Pakistan makes big mistakes.
Is there anything that China asks of Pakistan, that it would not do happily if it hurts India. Foreign air bases, naval bases, trade, law-fare, on ground intelligence, skirmish, large war, domestic unrest, insurgency, … Pakistan has gone above and beyond even at the cost of their sovereignty.
There is no way around relegation. We should accept our lower status, bide our time and enjoy playing the game at hand. Anyways, the India-Pakistan military wars are surprisingly civilized, it is not like it costs a lot in lives or …
The US was a distant 4th great power prior to WW1. We simply have to hide our capacities and bide our time. There will be a day when Chinese internal contradictions will manifest themselves. But that day isn’t coming for at least a decade imo.
The bigger issue is that without those contradictions surfacing materially, we are not going to catch up or even tread water in our relative disparity with the CCP.
EU style coexistence is like dreaming Delhi is London or Mumbai is NY. It is not. We are at a different point on the civilization development, decades behind on infra, centuries behind in experiences and capacity, …
Munir is only 57 and fit, a long life of humiliation ahead … Pakistanis dig ‘The Dictator’ series, the fifth season is on air.
Pakistanis being a agrarian society feel the pain on this one. Linking it to terrorism is just making up a causus beli. There is emphasis on cooperative spirit, friendship, and goodwill in the very text of IWT. None exist between the two.
Third parties will always try to wriggle themselves in and become the Sarpanch. China does not accept ICJ’s judgement on South China Sea re China-Phillipines. Pakistan toppled entire elected government of Afghanistan. Strong do what they can …
Your country was created on the idea that Hindus cannot be trusted. Your lies are meaningless.
Why aren’t you going to war then? Why all this talk and no action?
Cuz they caint.
How does that saying go? Sow the wind and….
We are seeing the stage being set up for the world to apply sanctions on India.
And all of its India’s own doing.
Lol
Sanctions. LMAO
https://stratnewsglobal.com/india/indus-waters-treaty-to-remain-in-abeyance-india-rejects-arbitration-award/
Treaties cannot exist in perpetuity. The court can provide any ruling it wishes. Water management will remain a marginal issue on the international stage. If a richer country like Egypt couldn’t get Ethiopia sanctioned India is surely not going to be affected. At its worst it could cause issues with international lines of credit for financing dams.
did Egypt and Ethiopia have a treaty?
There was a previous treaty on the Nile but it was imposed on the Ethiopians with them not even being considered a party to it. Egypt demanded that the treaty be taken as a precedent to any future treaty negotiated on the Nile to ensure its own share of water was guaranteed. There’s an entire cold war happening in East Africa today with Ethiopia, Somali Land, UAE, Israel vs Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, and Turkey. None of these military escalations, threats, treaty violations stopped Ethiopia from constructing the GERD.
This Egypt-Ethiopia discussion reminds me of Elton John and Tim Rice’s musical “Aida” (based on Verdi’s opera).
In the opening number Amneris sings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Agi_wVi0LNI
https://ladakh.gov.in/pioneering-initiative-by-l-g-vk-saxena-saves-90-million-litres-of-glacier-water-daily-channelises-it-to-ladakhs-parched-farmlands/
While Pakistan is busy congratulating itself on its great narrative victory…..