Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

Water wars are next in South Asia

Background:
In addition to altruistic concern for a sister culture, India would have gained concrete things from Tibetan freedom. The plateau is the source of many of the rivers in Asia, and benign Tibetan control over them would have given much of Asia water security: the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Irrawaddy all originate there.

Instead, China plans to divert the Brahmaputra northwards from Tibet. If so, the Ganga-Brahmaputra doab would dry up, and civilisation as we know it would end in North India. This is a national security issue of the highest order, and Indians ignore it at their peril.

Chinese dams across the Mekong are already causing drought in downstream riparian states like Laos and Cambodia. The Chinese deliberately created floods on the Brahmaputra in Arunachal not too long ago. There is every reason to believe China will proceed with diverting water, ignoring India’s objections.

This water war India could absolutely have avoided by routing China in 1962. Similarly, Chinese nuclear missiles in Tibet’s high plains, as well as the dumping of nuclear waste therein, both have serious security and environmental implications for India.
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The threat of a lake burst in Tibet portending a catastrophic flood in Himachal Pradesh has exposed India's vulnerability to environmental warfare where nature's forces are manipulated to create deadly weapons, a senior defence official has said.

"The first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden." The two PLA Air Force senior colonels who authored "Unrestricted Warfare" see many new kinds of warfare emerging. These include trade war, financial war, terrorism in the future using new technologies, ecological warfare and news media power.
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:VL4mSpIRuvcJ:www.fas.org/nuke/guide/china/doctrine/unresw2.htm+....
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The United States is also involved in using ecological or environmental warfare.

"They want to infiltrate Egypt and keep a tight lid on Nile tributaries, necessary for Egyptians to survive."

If we control the Nile we are threatening every man, woman and child in Egypt with death unless they do as Bush says.
#msg-3680101

-Am

Water wars are next in South Asia —Khaled Ahmed’s tv Review

SECOND OPINION:

Where there are treaties on river waters, the trouble could be managed through diplomacy. But in cases where there are no treaties, the lower riparians with weak resources will have to eat humble pie. It is better for a lower riparian to have what looks like an unequal treaty. Having no treaty at all goes in favour of the upper riparian

As the climate changes, the states in South Asia will forget their territorial disputes and prepare to go to war on the sharing of waters. Pakistan has two crucial rivers Jhelum and Chenab coming through territory controlled by India. Bangladesh has over 50 rivers controlled by India. In Southeast Asia fully five countries have their rivers controlled by China. In Syria and Iraq, the two famous rivers Euphrates and Tigris can get dried up unless the states have equitable treaties with upper riparian Turkey. Israel controls the water of West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.

Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt (August 29, 2004) Malik Habibullah Butt stated that when Nehru offered to Nawab of Bahawalpur that he join India he also told him that Sutlej would be taken away by India. The Nawab rebuffed the offer and joined Pakistan. The Bhakra-Nangal Dam was 90 percent complete under the British and was programmed to water Cholistan, thus a portion of the water was allocated to what became Pakistan. In 1948 India crossed the Ganda Singh Barrage and stopped the waters of Sutlej flowing into Pakistan, thus starting a water dispute. Pakistani committee for assets was incompetent but Ayub Khan proved to be a traitor. He signed an Indus Waters Treaty with India, which gave three rivers — Ravi, Sutlej, Beas — to India. This kind of giving away entire rivers had never been done in human history. What was neglected in negotiations was the underground water which is 40 percent of a river’s real discharge. It is because of this that the underground water of South Punjab had become poisonous, unfit for crops and for drinking.

‘Rivers were sold’ is a slogan being raised in Sindh, Indian Punjab and Held Kashmir. Scarce water is being fought over not by the states alone but provinces within the states. In the coming days, there will be trouble over water. Where there are treaties, the trouble could be managed through diplomacy. But in cases where there are no treaties, the lower riparians with weak resources will have to eat the humble pie. It is better for a lower riparian to have what looks like an unequal treaty. Having no treaty at all goes in favour of the upper riparian. India has a 30-year treaty over the Ganges waters with Bangladesh, but has no treaty over the other 50 rivers that come down through India. The demand for water is so high inside India that it will go ahead with its ‘river-linking project’ even though it knows that Bangladesh’s 50 rivers will go dry as a result of it. Pakistan has been able to successfully challenge some of the Indian water projects over Jhelum and Chenab rivers under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Imagine if it had no treaty binding India to an agreed apportionment of water!


http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-11-2004_pg3_2