Few things have endured as long as the Indus Waters Treaty in the long and troubled history of South Asia. And for 65 years, that structure ensured that even in times of war and skirmishes, as well as diplomatic face-offs, the lifeblood of the Indus Valley was cordoned off from politics. It was lauded around the world as an example of bitter rivals succeeding in compartmentalising disputes and cooperating over shared resources. That stability collapsed in 2025.

“In jettisoning the IWT, India has defied international law and bared its policy towards Pakistan in its rawest state: that of chaos.”

In the aftermath of the false flag Pahalgam event and the embarrassment of its failed ‘Operation Sindoor’, India abandoned restraint. It froze the treaty, withheld data, and gleefully justified that Pakistan was going through one of its worst flood spells in memory. This is not traditional policy. It’s a symptom of what can be described as the India chaos doctrine: a policy to weaponise everything, narratives of terrorism, water flows, wheat exports, for example, to create misery for neighbours in the hope of hiding its own failures.

When devastating monsoon floods struck Pakistan in August 2025, the wreckage was overwhelming. Some 820 died, some 1,100 were injured, and at least 1.2 million were driven from their homes. Whole villages were washed away, and farmland crucial to Pakistan’s food security was submerged. Any country with a soul would have stood in solidarity with its neighbour. Instead, leading Indian news anchors downplayed the severity of the pain.

Characters like Gaurav Arya even stooped to the level of saying that Pakistan should be drowned in the monsoon and die of thirst in the dry. These were not lone ramblings on fringe platforms. They echoed the jingoist and militarised mediascape that employs anti-Pakistan hysteria, while forging public opinion around the idea that now even water must become a weapon of war.

The circumstances in which this rhetoric was spoken were also no coincidence. Days after the Pahalgam attack, India declared it was stopping the Indus Waters Treaty. High officials, such as Home Minister Amit Shah, announced that the treaty would never be restored. What India terms “abeyance” is, in fact, a unilateral violation of a legally binding agreement. There is no provision in the treaty for an exit.

According to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, suspension or withdrawal must be expressly provided for, or there must be exceptional circumstances. Neither applies here. In jettisoning the IWT, India has defied international law and bared its policy towards Pakistan in its rawest state: that of chaos. Failing to win on the battlefield or in the realm of the narrative, India has resorted to ecological blackmail, playing with the lives of millions downstream.

“By suspending it, India has obliterated the last pillar of resilience between the two countries.”

To understand how reckless the move was, you must remember the treaty’s vital importance. A World Bank-brokered agreement in 1960 divided the basin into eastern rivers for India and western rivers for Pakistan, with restricted usage rights on the latter for India. It had survived the wars of 1965, 1971, and 1999, as well as countless crises in between. It provided Pakistan with certainty about the flow of water that sustains agriculture, energy, and drinking supplies for more than 240 million people. By suspending it, India has obliterated the last pillar of resilience between the two countries.

India is somewhat limited in its ability to cut off the rivers, but the real dangers are all timing and information. India turns off data tap. By halting the sharing of hydrological data, India’s decision leaves Pakistan in the dark during monsoon flooding, depriving it of an accurate chance at flood preparedness. While a million or more Pakistanis were displaced that year, the missing upstream data isn’t a technical not-a-mapping problem. It’s a purposeful injury. Likewise, during the dry season, modest adjustments to flows can disrupt sowing cycles, lead to hydropower cutbacks, and exacerbate food insecurity. It’s ecological warfare in all but name, and a dangerous new front in India’s strategy of chaos.

The phenomenon is not limited to Pakistan. India’s neighbours know how to play this book. Over the decades, Bangladesh has suffered from the one-sided erection of the Farakka Barrage in the 1970s, which has effectively destroyed the ecological balance and the ways of life downstream during the dry months.

It is not that the question of the Teesta agreement has not been settled; Delhi has kept it up its sleeve as a trump card. Other neighbors, including Nepal and Bhutan, have also complained about Indian hydro-dominance. We are now witnessing not a stand-alone dispute but an overarching plan: India’s willingness to bully weaker neighbours by manipulating water flows when it suits its strategic calculus.

The chaos doctrine does not apply only to water. It cuts across all dimensions of India’s posture toward the region. Pahalgam was a master class in reflexive control: conduct a false flag, blame Pakistan, and then exploit that lie as justification for aggression. Operation Sindoor was envisioned as a theater-level military demonstration, conclusively exploited by Pakistan in both conventional and non-conventional fields.

Humiliated on both counts, Delhi took the battle to the water. This ladder of escalation, gliding without interruption from terrorism charges to cross-border raids and now to environmental blackmail, in fact encapsulates an approach that thrives not on stability but on ongoing crisis.

It’s the Indian media that jazz up the chaos and become the sounding boards. No prime-time anchor raises doubts about the legality or morality of the suspension of the IWT; no anchor raises concerns about international perception of the suspension. They don’t meditate on the humanitarian catastrophe that Pakistan’s floods represent; they see opportunity in the disaster.

“It’s ecological warfare in all but name, and a dangerous new front in India’s strategy of chaos.”

This is not journalism. It’s propaganda masquerading as entertainment, which is intended to keep the Indian public high on hate for Pakistan. The effect is twofold. At home, it shores up political support for a government that relies on fear and distraction. Regionally, it solidifies policymakers into stances they cannot retreat from, making chaos the default condition.

The Pakistani problem is excellent, but it is also reversible. The first front is legal. Pakistan needs to fight its cases at the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the Neutral Expert with determination and record every Indian transgression. The 2025 floods led to a suspension of data sharing, indicating that India’s foot-dragging is not hypothetical but has already caused damage.

The second front is diplomatic. Islamabad has to cast India’s suspension not as a bilateral spat but as a worldwide problem of treaty violation and environmental blackmail. In undercutting the IWT, India has undercut the principle of sharing international water. It’s a story that is playing out in other regions in which rivers flow across contested borders.

The third front is technical. Pakistan cannot afford to rely on Indian data. Satellite surveillance, autonomous telemetry, and predictive analyses are essential investments.” Partnerships could potentially fill the gap with China, whose space-based hydrology capabilities are more advanced, they added.

India’s leverage will be diminished by the sovereign ability to predict and control water flows. The final front is narrative. Pakistan should reveal India’s chaos doctrine on international forums. It is this state, which formally alleges that Pakistan is a “factory of terrorism,” that is now openly threatening ecological aggression against the country. This hypocrisy must be exposed in diplomatic circles, media battles, and policy discussions.

Humiliation is not what India has inflicted upon Pakistan in 2025 but upon itself. By walking away from the last functioning two-way policy model, by clowning around the enduring outrages of suffering tragedy, and by waving environmental blackmail around, it has exposed its heartland chaos doctrine. It’s not the conduct of a responsible power, but of a bully cornered by its own failures.

Pakistan has demonstrated its resilience and resistance, both militarily by thwarting the Sindoor Operation and diplomatically by garnering support, as well as strategically by preparing its counter options. The Indus is still Pakistan’s lifeline, and no Indian chest-thumping can change that.

“Water is not a weapon. It is life itself. In seeking to weaponize it, India has crossed a line that shows its desperation and its danger.”

India’s chaos doctrine is a doctrine of self-inflicted chaos. It corrodes regional trust, subverts international law, and undermines India’s reputation abroad. The world must understand that in South Asia, it is not Pakistan’s perceived intransigence but India’s manufactured crisis that threatens regional stability. Water is not a weapon. It is life itself. In seeking to weaponize it, India has crossed a line that shows its desperation and its danger.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not represent the views, beliefs, or policies of the Stratheia.