As its first response to the terrorist attacks in Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22, initially claimed by an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba, India’s Cabinet Committee on Security issued a list of diplomatic, political, and non-military directives vis-à-vis Pakistan on April 24. After a meeting of its National Security Committee the following day, Pakistan responded with reciprocal measures. While both states’ current raft of measures are inherently non-escalatory, they contain potential for military escalation.
Non-Escalatory Measures
Both India and Pakistan have reduced the strength of their High Commissions in each other’s countries to 30, with the Air, Naval, and Defence Advisors declared Persona Non Grata. Additionally, the SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme is now suspended bilaterally, however with an exemption for Sikh pilgrims. Pakistan has also shut its airspace for all Indian airlines and has suspended all bilateral trade, including through third states. These measures are non-escalatory, as they simply represent a change in scale (not in character) of the measures both states already took in August 2019. Since then, trade through third states (such as the United Arab Emirates) has been paltry, people-to-people ties have been minimal, there is no High Commissioner in either mission, and direct bilateral trade remains suspended. Essentially, India and Pakistan share a minimal transactional relationship, even marked by the absence of military friction at the Line of Control since the 2021 ceasefire. This reality renders these new measures to be more symbolic, than substantial.
Even in the absence of short-term military action, should India’s diversion of river water substantially push Pakistan itself to military action in the long term, Islamabad will presumably be forced to escalate until India rescinds its IWT measures.
However, India also set the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in “abeyance”, until Pakistan “credibly and irrevocably abjures cross-border terrorism”. “Vehemently rejecting” this, Pakistan asserted that it “shall exercise the right to hold all bilateral agreements with India including but not limited to Simla Agreement in abeyance” until India stops “fomenting terrorism inside Pakistan.” The assumption here is that Pakistan reserves the right to suspend all bilateral agreements in the future.
In India’s view, suspending the IWT channels long simmering domestic grievances with the Treaty, to placate current calls for immediate anti-Pakistan action, and follows New Delhi’s correspondence with Pakistan on the issue since 2023 calling to re-negotiate specific provisions of the Treaty. But India presently lacks the infrastructural capabilities to significantly divert river flow. Its actions will have no immediate material effect on the Indus system, until it constructs new storage structures, or the river’s dry season (December-February) increases Pakistan’s water needs—whichever comes first. India also has its own apprehensions vis-à-vis the proposed Yarlung Zangbo mega-dam by Pakistan’s strongest ally China on the Brahmaputra River for which India and Bangladesh are lower riparian states. Such apprehensions could possibly restrict India’s hand for concerns of setting a precedent on one river that may impact its position on another. Hence, India’s decision, though substantial, is still non-escalatory in the very short term.
Targeting the IWT also suits India’s policy of de-hyphenation with Pakistan, which entails promoting India’s economic and geopolitical growth and dis-incentivizing global attention on the old Indo-Pak faultline. Moreover, resisting Pakistan’s attempts at internationalizing the Kashmir issue (especially with the attack occurring during U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s visit to India) demands greater non-engagement and not immediate military action that could rake up the faultline again.
In Pakistan’s view, any attempt by India to “stop or divert the flow of water” will be considered as an “act of war.” Hence, New Delhi’s decision presents a day-after problem, should India begin physically manipulating the course of the Western rivers (Indus, Chenab, Jhelum). But such manipulation would have to go beyond India’s diversion of the Eastern rivers, which Pakistan does not deem a concern (as it maintained in 2019, after the Pulwama attack). In any case, the flow of the Ravi River to Pakistan was completely halted by February 2024 when India operationalized the Shahpur Kandi barrage.
Escalatory Potential
Both India and Pakistan have, thus far, stuck to non-military measures, which are only potentially (and not immediately) escalatory. Additionally, the 2016 and 2019 crises showed the desire and ability of both states to seek quick off-ramps as well as luck playing a bit of a role, even as the risk of inadvertent escalation remained high. However, even if India does not follow-up its unilateral suspension of the IWT with cross-border military action in the coming days (with public opinion palpably reaching near consensus on the need for such action), the risk of kinetic action flows from bilateral decisions vis-à-vis the Treaty itself.
On April 25, India’s Minister of Water Resources publicly declared that the Indian government has a “comprehensive strategy” with short, medium, and long-term plans to ensure that “not even a drop of water goes to Pakistan”. If this strategy pertains to the three Western rivers, it categorically breaches Pakistan’s publicly declared redline and threshold for war, necessitating a military response from Islamabad to preserve the credibility of its own deterrence. India’s own ability to fully manipulate its rightful share of the Western rivers under the IWT has long been affected by Pakistani opposition. For instance, since 1984, India’s Tulbul Project on the Jhelum River (Wullar Lake) has been delayed, suspended, and then advanced in spurts due to Pakistan interpreting it as a man-made obstruction (and a storage facility), while India views it as a regulating structure for non-consumptive use. In 2016 too, one of India’s responses to the Uri attack was a review of the Tulbul project’s suspension. Hence, for New Delhi, suspending the IWT also ends its need to heed Pakistani objections to such projects, which have caused protracted legal disputes in the last two decades.
Moreover, India’s new freedom to ignore the IWT’s data-sharing obligations when controlling water flow would allow it to create trouble for Pakistan downstream—such as the current flooding of the Jhelum in Muzaffarabad after India reportedly opened the Uri dam without warning. Such instances of lower riparian states attributing the flooding of trans-boundary rivers to the upper riparian state opening their dams have occurred in the recent past in South Asia. It is the current crisis-ridden atmosphere that compounds their already adverse effects. Furthermore, in India’s experience, China has already set the precedent for restricting river data-sharing during crisis; Beijing stopped sharing data on the Brahmaputra River with India for a year in the aftermath of the Doklam stand-off in 2017.
Any Indian military action will have to match or surpass the scale of the Balakot airstrikes, to restore public faith in Indian deterrence against Pakistan since the deterrence value of the 2019 strikes is now in question.
However, both India and Pakistan have set the yardstick for de-escalation as the cessation of alleged support to terrorism in the other’s territory, but with no stated, mutually agreeable metric to judge the burden of proof. Should India proceed with a diversion of the Western rivers, Pakistan will be forced to impose costs through military action. Any significant diversion of the Western rivers is also technically part of Pakistan’s “economic strangulation” threshold for nuclear first use—a threat that Pakistani lawmakers have publicly conveyed to India after its IWT suspension.
But Pakistan’s threshold of tolerance here is untested since there is no precedent for such action vis-à-vis the IWT in both states’ independent history.
India’s Military Options
Presently, the more pressing question is if India will conduct limited cross-border strikes, with or without elements of escalation control (such as through public statements like in 2016 and 2019), but with an ability to bear Pakistan’s (presumably) equally limited retaliation. Any Indian military action will have to match or surpass the scale of the Balakot airstrikes, to restore public faith in Indian deterrence against Pakistan since the deterrence value of the 2019 strikes is now in question. India’s options include using new stand-off systems such as the Dassault Rafale mounted SCALP missile (with a 300 kilometer range) to target both suspected terror launch-pads or more permanent infrastructure in Pakistani territory, without crossing the Line of Control. Notwithstanding the BrahMos cruise missiles (one of which misfired into Pakistan in 2022), India also has other short-range ballistic missiles (including the older liquid-fueled Prithvi family) that provide a surface-to-surface option. However, the use of ballistic missiles (which are under India’s Strategic Forces Command) would be loaded with nuclear risk. Moreover, if India does use its ballistic missiles, it will be unprecedented for two reasons. First, it would prove India’s newfound comfort in using its existing ballistic missiles with conventional warheads during conflict. Both the Agni Prime and Pralay, which are short-range ballistic missiles intended to be used in conventional roles, await formal induction. Second, it would reveal India’s fresh appetite for escalation, potentially indicating that New Delhi stands ready to weather the risk of a limited conventional war.
In the last two crises, the Indian cross-border response came ten and twelve days after the Uri and Pulwama terror attacks respectively. But this time around, there are some factors that could restrain India’s immediate inclination to conduct strikes, such as an Indian Border Security Force being in Pakistani custody after inadvertently crossing the LoC on April 23 and that the Pakistani military, especially after the lessons of past crises, is in a state of high alert in anticipation of an Indian attack. With both sides conducting live fire drills in the Arabian Sea to display their offensive readiness, the chances of escalation are high. However, even in the absence of short-term military action, should India’s diversion of river water substantially push Pakistan itself to military action in the long term, Islamabad will presumably be forced to escalate until India rescinds its IWT measures.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of South Asian Voices, the Stimson Center, or our supporters.
Also Read: The Fragility of Stability: India-Pakistan Nuclear CBMs in the Shadow of Pahalgam. For more analysis on Pahalgam and its aftermath, read our entire series here.
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Image 1: Stefan Krasowski via Flickr
Image 2: Muhammad Imran Saeed via Flickr
