Under the blazing midday sun near the banks of the Indus River, Pakistani farmer Homla Thakhur anxiously sprays pesticide over his withering crops. Despite being just a street away from the river, water levels are alarmingly low — and now India has threatened to block upstream supplies in retaliation for a deadly militant attack in Kashmir.
"If they shut off the water, this land will turn into another Thar Desert," said Thakhur, 40, while hauling his empty tank back to the river for a refill. "We’ll die of starvation."
Thakhur's modest 5-acre farm sits in Latifabad, Sindh province, where the mighty Indus makes its final stretch toward the Arabian Sea after originating in Tibet and flowing through India. His fears are shared by dozens of local farmers and experts, especially after several consecutive years of poor rainfall.
On Wednesday, India took the unprecedented step of suspending the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty — brokered by the World Bank — which guarantees Pakistan's access to waters that irrigate 80% of its farmlands. India stated the suspension would remain until Pakistan "credibly and irreversibly" ends its support for cross-border militancy.
New Delhi blames Pakistani militants for the attack that killed 26 tourists in Kashmir, though Islamabad denies any involvement and warned that "any move to halt or divert Pakistan’s rightful share of water" would be seen as an act of war.
The Indus Waters Treaty had split control of the river and its tributaries between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Although the treaty allows India to construct run-of-the-river hydropower projects without significant storage capacity, immediate action to cut water flows is complex. Still, changes could be underway within months.
"We will not allow even a drop of Indus water to reach Pakistan," declared Indian Water Resources Minister Chandrakant Raghunath Paatil on X. He did not address concerns raised by Pakistani farmers.
According to two senior Indian officials speaking anonymously, India could soon begin diverting river water into its own irrigation canals and has fast-tracked plans for hydroelectric dams, projects that could take four to seven years to complete.
For now, India plans to cease sharing critical data on river flows, halt flood warnings, and boycott annual meetings of the Permanent Indus Commission — a move that could leave Pakistan blind to vital water information, according to Kushvinder Vohra, former head of India’s Central Water Commission and past Indus Commissioner.
"Without flow data, Pakistan will be flying blind," Vohra said. "They won’t know how much water is coming, or when."
The crisis threatens not only agriculture but also electricity production and could send shockwaves through Pakistan’s already struggling economy.
Vaqar Ahmed, an economist with Oxford Policy Management, warned that Pakistan has grossly underestimated India's ability to weaponize water.
"While India lacks immediate infrastructure to block flows, especially during flood seasons, this gives Pakistan a crucial window to fix its leaking, inefficient water systems," he said.
A History of Disputes
Tensions around the treaty have been simmering for years. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has pushed for renegotiation, and both countries are currently entangled in arbitration at The Hague over water storage limits at Kishenganga and Ratle hydropower projects.
"We now have the freedom to pursue our projects without interference," said Vohra.
India recently informed Pakistan in writing that circumstances have drastically changed since the treaty was signed — citing population booms and the growing need for clean energy like hydropower.
The World Bank, for its part, emphasized its role as a limited technical signatory to the treaty and declined to comment on sovereign actions taken by India and Pakistan.
Farmers like Nadeem Shah, who tends 150 acres of cotton, sugarcane, wheat, and vegetables in Sindh, are also sounding the alarm. "We trust God," he said, "but there’s real fear about what India might do next."
The three rivers governed by the treaty — lifelines for Pakistan’s 240 million people — irrigate over 16 million hectares of farmland.
Ghasharib Shaokat of Pakistan Agriculture Research stressed that the situation introduces dangerous instability into a system built for predictability. "There’s no substitute for these rivers," he said. "They fuel our farms, our cities, our power plants — they sustain millions."
While the treaty had survived four wars between India and Pakistan since 1947, its suspension is being described as a perilous shift.
"We are already trapped in a legacy of conflict," said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s former foreign minister. "Tearing up the Indus Water Treaty risks binding future generations to even deeper hostilities. We cannot let that happen."