THE India-Pakistan water dispute has mercifully been a low-key affair despite its potential lethality, and the two sides have had the good sense in the past to seek international mediation as provided for in the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Pakistan's legitimate concerns over Indian dam-building activity in held Kashmir now seem to be evoking international sympathy. As the Foreign Office spokesman said on Thursday, the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee's warning on “water wars” in the future substantiated Pakistan's position on the issue. Released on Tuesday, the report notes with concern that the new dam and irrigation works in India-held Kashmir could give New Delhi the ability to deny Pakistan its share of Indus waters “at crucial moments in the growing season”. Seen against the history of India-Pakistan ties since independence and the three wars the two countries have fought, the water dispute could — as the Senate report said — add to the mistrust between the neighbours and lead to regional instability.

There is no doubt the Indus Waters Treaty served to remove a major source of conflict in South Asia by allotting the exclusive use of given rivers to both. But the treaty is more than five decades old, and because of the rapidly increasingly populations in the two countries and the need for increased water supplies, the two governments need to work together to avert a future conflict. Unlike India, Pakistan's agriculture is entirely dependent on irrigation, and this makes Pakistan vulnerable to changes resulting as much from climatic disorders and melting glaciers as from what India calls “non-consumptive irrigation works”. This is not such a simple matter. The inflexibility which the Senate report finds in the Indus treaty can be overcome if Islamabad and New Delhi themselves decide to show flexibility. In 2007, the judgment on Baglihar dam was accepted by the two sides gracefully, though that has by no means served to resolve the long-term threat from the non-resolution of the water dispute. One hopes the two sides will consider the “serious ramifications” which the Senate report speaks of when they finally resume their suspended dialogue.