The Indus River Basin, 1999-2008
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The Indus River Basin, 1999-2008 - An intellectual history in hydropolitics Per Steineide Refseth Master's Thesis in History, submitted to the Institute of Archaeology, Conservation and History UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2013 © Per Steineide Refseth 2013 The Indus River Basin, 1999-2008: An intellectual history in hydropolitics Per Steineide Refseth http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo i Contents ___________________________________________________________________________ CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................................................ II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................... III ABBREVIATIONS .............................................................................................................................................. IV LIST OF MAPS .................................................................................................................................................. IV 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 1 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENT ....................................................................................................................... 3 THE INDIAN PERSPECTIVE .......................................................................................................................................... 4 THE CHRONOLOGICAL END OF THE ANALYSIS ................................................................................................................. 4 CONTEXTUALIZING THE BAGLIHAR DISPUTE ................................................................................................................... 5 THE INDUS WATERS TREATY ...................................................................................................................................... 8 STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS ...................................................................................................................................... 11 2. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................... 13 SOURCE MATERIAL AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH ................................................................................................. 13 PREVIOUS RESEARCH .............................................................................................................................................. 18 THEORY ............................................................................................................................................................... 21 3. THE BAGLIHAR DISPUTE: 1999-2004 ........................................................................................................... 33 1999-2000: DISSATISFACTION IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR ............................................................................................. 34 2001-2002 WATER AS A WEAPON – ABROGATING THE IWT? ...................................................................................... 45 2003-2004: NO PROGRESS ON THE BAGLIHAR DISPUTE ............................................................................................... 53 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................................... 60 4. THE BAGLIHAR DISPUTE: 2005-2008 ........................................................................................................... 63 THIRD PARTY INTERFERENCE AT THE REQUEST OF PAKISTAN ........................................................................................... 64 WATER THROUGH PAKISTANI EYES ............................................................................................................................ 70 IMPROVING WATER MANAGEMENT IN THE INDUS BASIN ............................................................................................... 78 THE VERDICT ........................................................................................................................................................ 84 IN THE AFTERMATH OF BAGLIHAR ............................................................................................................................. 90 SUMMARY ........................................................................................................................................................... 94 EPILOGUE: THE KISHENGANGA DISPUTE ..................................................................................................................... 95 5. CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................................. 97 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................................. 105 ii Acknowledgements __________________________________________________________________________ First and foremost, thanks to my supervisors Pamela Price and Geir Heierstad, for thorough guidance, encouragements and critics. I am grateful to Suba Chandran at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies for taking me in as a research intern, January – April 2011. I also want to thank the Institute of Archaeology, Conservation and History (IAKH) for funding my trip to New Delhi. Oslo, May 2013 Per Steineide Refseth iii Abbreviations IWRM - Integrated Water Resources Management IWT - Indus Waters Treaty J&K - Jammu and Kashmir PCA - Permanent Court of Arbitration, in Hague PIC - Permanent Indus Commission List of Maps Map 1. The Indus River Basin - 9 iv 1. Introduction ___________________________________________________________________________ Water cannot be managed for a single purpose: all water management serves multiple objectives and navigates among competing interests. Within a nation, these interests - domestic users, farmers, hydropower generators, recreational users, ecosystems - are often at odds, and the probability of a mutually acceptable solution falls exponentially in proportion to the number of stakeholders. Add international boundaries, and the chances drop yet again. Without a mutual solution, these parties can find themselves in dispute, and even violent conflict, with each other or with state authorities. Still, water-related disputes must be considered in the broader political, ethnic, and religious context. Water is never the single - and hardly ever the major - cause of conflict. But it can exacerbate existing tensions and therefore must be considered within the larger context of conflict and peace.1 This thesis examines India’s management of the Indus River system. I will refer to this as Indus Basin hydropolitics in the rest of the thesis.2 I analyze the writings of Indian water experts, within the context of Indus Basin hydropolitics between 1999 and 2008. In this period, India and Pakistan had a dispute concerning the construction of the Baglihar hydroelectric project (Baglihar), on the Chenab River in India. The Baglihar dispute is analyzed as an important excerpt from the modern history of the Indus River, and it is contextualized as a case that reflects the major issues of hydropolitics in the region, i.e. the struggle for sharing the Indus river-waters, utilizing the river-water for hydropower generation, and implementing sustainable water management. As one of the major rivers of the world, the Indus and its tributaries (the Indus River system) have played an important role in great power politics and in the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of people for thousands of years. The Indus River system originates in the Himalayas, Karakoram and Hindu Kush ranges. Indus and its five main tributaries flow through Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in India before they reach Pakistan. The Indus waters constitute most of Pakistan’s fresh water supply, and are immensely important to the agriculture of Pakistan. In upstream India, there are several dams for 1 Aaron T. Wolf et al., "Managing Water Conflict and Cooperation," State of the World 2005: Redefining Global Security (2005): 81. 2 “Hydropolitics is the systematic study of conflict and cooperation between states over water resources that transcend international borders.” Arun P. Elhance, Hydropolitics in the Third World : conflict and cooperation in international river basins (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999), p. 3. A basin is a region where precipitation and snowmelt drain downhill into another body of water, such as a river, lake, or dam. 1 hydropower generation and headworks for diverting river water to irrigation canals, which enables Indian control over the flow of the rivers. It is therefore important for Pakistan to maintain a relationship with India that contributes to safeguarding their water supply. The Indus Basin, which is the watershed of the Indus River system, is populated by approximately 230 million people. India and Pakistan have to an increasing extent faced problems of water scarcity and poor water management in the Indus Basin since the 1990s. In order to provide water for their inhabitants it is essential that India and Pakistan manage and share their water resources sustainably and avoid conflicts over water. Unfortunately,