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| Internal feud forces Pak to launch water war against India | | |
Early Times Report
Jammu, June 12: Whenever Pakistan is faced with inter-provincial feud over the distribution of water, Islamabad finds it convenient to blame India for denying or for stealing water.By doing it Islamabad attempts at diverting peoples attention by raising the bogey of water war against India.One is surprised over the way political leaders,top brass in the Army,extremists and others keep on changing their statements on the water shortage in Pakistan.
More amazing is the way the establishment in Islama-bad has been threatening to take the issue of violation of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty by India to the World Bank and request the international body to intervene as had been done in case of Baglihar-I. In April 2010 Pakistan Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, had told the National Assembly in Islamabad that "India is not stealing Pakistan's water. "He said that if Pakistan faced water crisis it was because of mismanagement and instead of looking into the reasons for mismanagement "we have a tendency to pass on the buck on India and exaggerate differences with India on water." In support of his contention Qureshi had stated that in Pakistan 34 million acre feet of water was lost because of mismanagement.He said that the total quantity of water that would reach Pakistan was 104 million acre feet but the water consumed was 70 million acre feet.Where does the remaining 34 million acre water go ?Experts say it is wasted because of mismanagement.This way If Islamabad took immediate steps for judicious use of water it may have no complaint against India.But it has not done so either because of paucity of resources or on account of its strategy to keep the water crisis alive for needling India.
At one stage India was blamed for having blocked flow of water from Chenab,Jehlum and the Indus,covered under the Indus Water Treaty, by having built several dams on these rivers. A lie to this charge was given by none other than the Indus Water Commissioner of Pakistan Jammaat Ali Shah,who stated that no country suffered water shortage because of dams built on rivers.He had explained that water shortage was the result of change in weather conditions.He had even gone to the extent of giving a clean chit to India by saying that whatever hydel projects had been built on the rivers were all under the Indus Water agreement. And interestingly the same Shah had been in the forefront of the campaign against India when it started building the 450 MW Baglihar power project in Jammu region.A Pakistani team led by Shah had visited India on three occasions and each time the team members had been taken to the project site.
Still the case was taken to the World Bank which appointed a Swiss engineer as an arbitrator.The arbitrator upheld India's case and simply recommended slight change in the height of the design.
In February 2010 the Federal Minister for Water Raja Parvez Ashraf had stated that India was within its rights to build dams on the Jehlum and the Chenab.He had added that India could provide irrigation facilities on 13 lakh acres of land in Jammu and Kashmir and store 2.85 million acre feet of water. Despite this sensible statement politicians, Army authorities and extremists continue to rake up India's violation of Indus Water Treaty. Those who do so ignore the extent of loss the country has been facing because of wastage of 30 million acre feet water in the Kotri stream in Sindh during the last over two years.Indications are that so long Islamabad failed to resolve the problem of waste of water,resulting in inter-provincial feuds,it will not stop holding India responsible for it .
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