Pakistan’s power minister has branded India’s decision to freeze a decades‑old river‑sharing pact after the Kashmir tourist massacre as “water warfare,” underscoring the dramatic deterioration in ties between the two nuclear‑armed neighbours.
Twenty‑six men were gunned down on Tuesday at a tourist spot in Pahalgam, the deadliest attack on Indian civilians in nearly twenty years.
Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri told reporters on Wednesday that the cabinet’s security committee had reviewed evidence of cross‑border involvement in the assault and decided to suspend the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty while also shutting the sole land crossing between the countries.
“India’s reckless suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty is an act of water warfare—a cowardly and illegal move,” Pakistan’s Power Minister Awais Lekhari posted on X late Wednesday.
Misri offered no public proof of Pakistani complicity but detailed further measures: India will withdraw its defence attachés from Islamabad and cut mission staff there from 55 to 30. Pakistani defence advisors in New Delhi have been declared persona non grata and given one week to depart, according to local media.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called an all‑party meeting to brief opposition leaders on the government’s response. Outside Pakistan’s High Commission in New Delhi on Thursday, protesters chanted slogans and pressed against police barricades.
In Islamabad, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif convened the National Security Committee to craft Pakistan’s reply, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on X.
The World Bank‑brokered Indus Waters Treaty, signed in 1960, allocates use of the Indus River system between the two countries and has survived two wars and many crises. Diplomatic relations were already frayed: Pakistan expelled India’s envoy and left its own ambassadorial post vacant after India revoked Jammu & Kashmir’s special status in 2019.
Both nations hold portions of Kashmir but claim it in its entirety. Modi’s government had touted the 2019 reorganisation as a peace‑and‑development milestone for the Muslim‑majority region; Tuesday’s bloodshed now challenges that narrative.
India has long accused Pakistan of fuelling the Kashmir insurgency, while Islamabad insists it provides only political and moral backing for Kashmiri self‑determination. The conflict, which erupted in 1989, has claimed tens of thousands of lives, though violence had eased recently as tourism returned to the scenic valley.
