Pakistan rejects India’s ‘water terrorism’

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has rejected India’s “water terrorism”, telling the UN Security Council that New Delhi’s unilateral actions to place the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance violate international law and threaten regional peace, security and stability.

“The scramble for natural resources and its linkage to conflict and instability is not new,” Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, said during a debate on “Energy, Critical Minerals and Security” under the 15-member Council’s agenda item, “Maintenance of International Peace and Security.”

He said that the world’s natural resources should serve as instruments of economic development and shared prosperity rather than coercion or conflict, as critical minerals increasingly underpin technologies driving the digital economy and the global energy transition.

He said the surge in demand for natural resources has created new geopolitical and geo-economic pressures, warning that if not managed responsibly, competition over such resources could disrupt supply chains, aggravate tensions, undermine sovereignty and contribute to instability.

Highlighting the importance of water resources, the Pakistani envoy stressed that shared water resources are indispensable for sustaining life as well as for sustainable development and prosperity.

“We reject the weaponisation of water to choke this lifeline for lower riparians, which also threatens regional peace, security and stability,” Ambassador Ahmad said.

He added that Pakistan was facing “water terrorism” from India, which he said had resorted to unilateral and unlawful actions by placing the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance in violation of international law and the treaty’s provisions.

“The international community must impress upon India to return to full compliance with the Indus Waters Treaty, which remains valid and in force under the August 2025 award of the Court of Arbitration,” he said.

Ambassador Ahmad warned that where mineral wealth intersects with weak governance, entrenched poverty and external interference, the risks of instability increase.

Referring to several conflict-affected regions, he said illicit extraction, trafficking networks and opaque financial flows were fuelling armed conflict and violence, weakening state institutions and depriving populations of legitimate revenues.

“Efforts to secure supply must not devolve into bloc politics, economic coercion or exclusionary arrangements,” he said, stressing that supply chain diversification should not become a tool for geopolitical containment.

“Fragmentation of global markets will undermine both energy transition objectives and collective security,” he added.