RAWALPINDI: The Pakistani military warns that any Indian attempt to follow through on recent threats to cut Islamabad’s share of the Indus River water system would trigger consequences lasting for generations.
New Delhi unilaterally suspended a decades-old water-sharing agreement with Pakistan last month. Brokered by the World Bank, the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty has withstood multiple Indian-Pakistani wars. If India weaponizes water and blocks the flow of an Indus River tributary — vital to Pakistan’s food security — the military says it will act. “I hope that time doesn’t come, but it will be such actions that the world will see and the consequences of that we will fight for years and decades to come.
Nobody dares stop water from Pakistan,” Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, spokesperson of the Pakistan Armed Forces, told Arab News. “It is some madman who can think that he can stop water of 240 million plus people of this country.”
Pakistan armed forces are professional armed forces and we adhere to the commitments that we make, and we follow in letter and spirit the instructions of the political government and the commitments that they hold, he said. “As far as Pakistan army is concerned, this ceasefire will hold easily and there have been confidence building measures in communication between both the sides,” he said.
“If any violation occurs, our response is always there ... but it is only directed at those posts and those positions from where the violations of the ceasefire happen. We never target the civilians. We never target any civil infrastructure,” Chaudhry said.
Chaudhry said that despite damage to infrastructure, they remained active: “There are ways through which Pakistan Air Force immediately sets these bases operational — they are all operational.” He warned of a high potential for renewed conflict despite the ceasefire, as long as the core issue, Kashmir, remains unaddressed.
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