International law over rhetoric! |
IN a recent Newsweek opinion piece titled “A Treaty Pakistan Destroyed Long Before India Set It Aside,” Indian Ambassador to United States Vinay Mohan Kwatra offered a politically charged defence of India’s decision to place the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in unilateral abeyance. The article attempts to shift blame onto Pakistan while framing the treaty as a casualty of regional political friction. However, this rhetoric overlooks a fundamental reality that the Indus Waters Treaty is a binding international agreement governed by law, not a political instrument that can be suspended at will.
As we all know that it was signed in 1960 following decade-long negotiations brokered by the World Bank. The treaty established a vital legal framework for transboundary water sharing in South Asia. Crucially, the agreement was deliberately engineered to be crisis-proof. It was built specifically to endure periods of intense diplomatic........