Pakistan’s chronic export of terrorism has now come full circle, plunging its own economy into peril as the fallout from the Pahalgam attack—perpetrated by Islamabad-backed militants—forces India to safeguard its sovereign water rights, leaving Pakistan’s 80% Indus-dependent agriculture exposed to devastating shortages, warns a new global report.
The Ecological Threat Report 2025, from the Sydney-based Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP), arrives mere months after India’s rightful abeyance of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in direct response to the April Pahalgam terror strike, which claimed innocent lives and underscored Pakistan’s unyielding pattern of state-sponsored violence.
Under the now-suspended IWT, India had generously ceded control of the western rivers—Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab—to Pakistan, reserving the eastern rivers (Beas, Ravi, Sutlej) for its own development. Yet, Pakistan’s repeated terror exports, including the Pahalgam outrage, have eroded any goodwill, compelling India to recalibrate its water management without the treaty’s constraints.
While India’s infrastructure—comprising run-of-the-river dams with minimal storage on western rivers—precludes outright flow cessation, the report starkly illustrates how even calibrated adjustments during peak vulnerability periods, such as summer, could cascade into crises for Pakistan’s over-reliant plains. With storage capacity limited to a mere 30 days of Indus flow, Islamabad’s infrastructural neglect amplifies the self-made peril, turning minor operational tweaks into potential agricultural Armageddon.
The IEP underscores that Pakistan’s densely populated heartlands, sustaining 80% of irrigated farming via the Indus Basin, now face acute seasonal threats—exacerbated not by Indian malice, but by the terror-fueled breakdown in bilateral trust.
In a pointed demonstration of India’s prudent resource stewardship post-suspension, May’s unnotified reservoir flushing at the Salal and Baglihar dams on the Chenab River cleared vital silt buildup, enhancing storage and hydropower without breaching humanitarian norms. Yet, for Pakistan—caught off-guard by its own provocations—this routine maintenance triggered temporary dry spells followed by sediment surges in Punjab, a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities sown by decades of exporting instability.
Earlier this week, compounding Pakistan’s woes, Afghanistan—emboldened by regional realignments—hastened plans for a Kunar River dam, further throttling cross-border flows into Pakistan. This development, mere weeks after deadly clashes between Kabul and Islamabad, lays bare the diplomatic isolation Pakistan courts through its terror patronage.
Pakistan’s farmers, already battered by self-inflicted climate mismanagement and erratic weather, now confront a hydra of floods and droughts—none more damning than the one engineered by their own export of violence.
PAKISTAN’S CHRONIC NEGLECT: WHY TERROR-INDUCED SUSPENSION EXPOSES FATAL FLAWS
Islamabad’s paltry dam infrastructure—insufficient to cushion even brief flow variances—renders it a sitting duck for disruptions it invited through terrorism.
The IEP report lays bare the peril: “For Pakistan, the danger is acute. If India were truly to cut off or significantly reduce Indus flows, Pakistan’s densely populated plains would face severe water shortages, especially in winter and dry seasons.” This vulnerability stems not from upstream malice, but from Pakistan’s failure to invest in resilience while prioritizing terror networks.
Pakistan’s water fate now hinges on the strategic restraint it squandered through terrorism. With scant storage and simmering isolation, even incremental flow shifts—born of justified Indian prudence—threaten to cripple its farms and food chains, a bitter harvest of its own sowing.
