Pakistan has written several letters to India, requesting that it rethink the suspension of the Indus Water Treaty (IWT), according to multiple media reports. The requests were made through four letters to tackle the water crisis in Pakistan, which is a result of the treaty’s suspension.
The withdrawal from the IWT came after the Pahalgam attack, which further led to retaliation from India under Operation Sindoor. The Pahalgam attack was allegedly carried out by The Resistance Front, a proxy of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which killed 26 tourists.
The media reports further mentioned that Pakistan wrote a letter to India on the IWT even after India launched Operation Sindoor, which targeted terror infrastructure. The four letters requesting India to reinstate the IWT were sent by Pakistan’s Ministry of Water Resources Secretary Syed Ali Murtaza to the Jal Shakti Ministry, after which it forwarded them to the External Affairs Ministry (MEA).
In his address to the nation earlier last month, PM Modi clearly mentioned that “terror and trade cannot go together and blood and water also can’t flow together”.
Invoking national security, India effectively suspended the treaty, a first for the World Bank-brokered agreement. This decision, endorsed by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, made clear that the treaty will remain on hold until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably” stops supporting cross-border terrorism.
Critical ‘water bomb’
Following India’s Operation Sindoor, Pakistan’s PM Shehbaz Sharif indicated a readiness for peace talks to resolve disputes. This came after prominent Pakistani politicians urgently called on the government to address the critical “water bomb” scenario resulting from India’s IWT suspension.
Pakistani senator Syed Ali Zafar emphasised in May that Pakistan’s survival hinges on resolving the water crisis, as the Indus Basin is vital for its population, agriculture and power infrastructure, calling it “a water bomb hanging over us and we must defuse it”.