Water should be a top priority for the new government, as escalating domestic and international disputes, floods and mismanagement threaten Pakistan’s future stability, according to Mushtaq Gaadi
Pakistan’s general election in May this year brought Nawaz Sharif and his centre-right Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party into power. Whilst this is good news for strengthening democracy in Pakistan, it’s unclear what the consequences of this new power configuration will be for the politics and management of water resources in Pakistan.
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Trees cocooned in spiders webs after floods in Sindh province
In November last year, the Lahore High Court ordered the federal government to start construction of the highly controversial Kalabagh dam on the Indus River in Punjab province. This project has strong support in Punjab, but is vehemently opposed by Sindhi and Pakhtun nationalists for a variety of reasons.
Owing to the status of Sindh as downstream province, as well as the bitter history of water disputes between Sindh and Punjab since the colonial era, almost all political forces in Sindh consider the dam a strategic tool which Punjab can use to control the Indus. Similarly, Pakhtun nationalists, particularly the Awami National Party (ANP), fear the dam will lead to massive flooding and water logging in the upstream districts of the Peshawar Valley.
Growing water disputes
The new government’s rise to power at the Centre and in Punjab province is also likely to intensify Punjab-Sindh water disputes around the controversial Kalabagh dam and the thorny issue of inter-provincial water distribution. By all indications, the government will try to take advantage of the High Court verdict and prevailing judicial activism to push ahead with the construction of the Kalabagh dam. However, the issue is politically explosive and could incite ethnic protests and violence.
The Bhasha-Diamer dam on the Indus River in the northwest is another mega water project that the new government wants to complete quickly. The dam will be used for irrigation and produce 45,000 megawatts of power in a country wracked by energy shortages. The project is less controversial within Pakistan, but has struggled to secure international financing because of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan over the status of the northern Gilgit-Baltistan region, where the project is situated. Given the bilateral conflict, the World Bank has already refused to finance the project without an agreement to go ahead from India.
Nawaz Sharif has expressed his wish to resolve all disputes and establish peaceful and cordial relations with India in recent media interviews. The resolution of water disputes including the Bhasha-Diamer Dam and Kishanganga hydropower project will dominate any meaningful bilateral negotiations if these take place in the near future.
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