The Indus waters dispute

India and Pakistan share the rivers of the Indus basin under a treaty of 1960. After an attack in Kashmir in April 2025 India stopped applying it. India says the treaty will stay suspended until Pakistan ends its support for armed groups. Pakistan says the treaty cannot be suspended and that cutting its water would be an act of war.

The wider conflict and each side's full account: India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Where it stands · September 2026

On 1 September 2026 the court in The Hague upheld the Indus Waters Treaty and rejected India's position. India rejected the ruling on 2 September. On 23 September Pakistan's foreign minister Dar raised the treaty at an OIC meeting and said India cannot set aside international obligations. On 25 September Pakistan's Sharif said any diversion of Indus waters would be treated as an act of war. On 26 September India and Pakistan clashed at the UN over terrorism and the water treaty.

What the dispute is about

The rivers rise in or pass through Indian-held territory and feed Pakistan's farms. The treaty gave the three western rivers to Pakistan and let India use them only in limited ways. India, upstream, now ties the water to a different quarrel: the armed groups that attack it from Pakistani soil. Pakistan, downstream, cannot accept that its harvest depends on India's judgement of its conduct. The treaty has no clause for suspension and no referee that both accept.

How each side explains it

India's account

India honoured the treaty through three wars while Pakistan sheltered the groups that killed Indians in Mumbai, Uri, Pulwama and Pahalgam. A treaty rests on good faith, and there is none. The terms of 1960 also gave away four fifths of the water and no longer fit India's population, its energy needs or the changing glaciers. Pakistan used the treaty's procedures to delay every Indian dam for decades. India asked for renegotiation in 2023 and 2024 and was stalled. The court in The Hague was set up in breach of the treaty's own sequence and has no standing.

In our coverage

India's account: Pakistan sponsors militancy; Kashmir is integral; treaty obsolete →32 headlines
Covered by:Times of India · Hindustan Times · NDTV · The Hindu · Indian Express · DD India

Pakistan's account

The treaty has no suspension clause and ends only by mutual agreement; "abeyance" is a breach. India blamed Pakistan for Pahalgam within a day, showed no evidence and refused the neutral inquiry Pakistan offered. It then emptied and refilled reservoirs on the Chenab without warning at sowing time. Four fifths of Pakistan's farmland and a quarter of its economy depend on these rivers; to hold them hostage is to threaten a population with hunger. The arbitration court has ruled three times that the treaty binds India.

What each account leaves out

India's leaves out that the treaty's lack of an exit was the price of its success; that no neutral body has examined Pahalgam; that every arbitral ruling has gone against the suspension; and that India is itself downstream of China on the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej, where the same logic could be turned on it.

Pakistan's leaves out the groups on the UN's terrorism list that operate from its territory; that it did use objections to slow nearly every Indian project; that India cannot yet physically hold back the western rivers; and that its own shortages owe much to a month's worth of storage, leaking canals and quarrels between its provinces.

The ledger

India

Wanted: an end to attacks from Pakistan, and better terms on the water.
Did: suspended the treaty, stopped sharing data, sped up dams on the western rivers.
Gained: a lever Pakistan cannot ignore.
Paid: three adverse rulings, and a precedent China can use upstream of India.

Pakistan

Wanted: the water, as of right and not of grace.
Did: went to court, to the UN and to allies; threatened war.
Gained: the law on its side.
Paid: nothing yet in water; a permanent uncertainty over every sowing season.

Words in dispute

Names and terms the sides do not share. This page keeps them out of its own voice.

in abeyance / illegal suspension
weaponisation of water, water aggression
patrons of terror / freedom struggle
Indian-occupied, held Kashmir / Jammu and Kashmir
illegally constituted court

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Week of Sep 28, 2026(1)

Tarar warns India's unilateral actions on IWT may have implications for water governance globally

1 sourcesSep 30, 2026