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A watershed for India and Pakistan
Tensions rise as radicals traditionally focused on Kashmir independence turn their attention to river rights
by Karin Brulliard
lahore, pakistan — The lat-
est standoff between India and Pakistan features familiar ele- ments: perceived Indian injus- tices, calls to arms by Pakistani extremists. But this dispute cen- ters on something different: water. Militant organizations tradi- tionally focused on liberating In- dian-held Kashmir have adopted water as a rallying cry, accusing India of strangling upstream riv- ers to desiccate downstream farms in Pakistan’s dry agricul- tural heartland. This spring, a re- ligious leader suspected of links to the 2008 Mumbai attacks led a protest here of thousands of farmers driving tractors and car- rying signs warning: “Water Flows or Blood.” The cleric, Hafiz Sayeed, recently told worshipers that India was guilty of “water terrorism.” India and Pakistan have
pledged to improve relations. But Sayeed’s water rhetoric, echoed in shrill headlines on both sides of the border, encapsulates two issues that threaten those fragile peace efforts — an Indian dam project on the shared Indus River and Pakistan’s reluctance to crack down on Sayeed. It also signals the expanding ambitions of Punjab-based mil- itant groups such as the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba, founded by Sayeed, through an issue that touches millions who live off Pa- kistan’s increasingly arid land. Pakistan’s water supply is dwindling because of climate change, outdated farming tech- niques and an exploding popula- tion. Now Pakistan says India is exacerbating its woes by violating the treaty that for 50 years has governed use of water originating in Kashmir. India denies the charge, and its ambassador to Pakistan recently called the water theft allegations “preposterous.” International wa- ter experts say that there is little evidence India is diverting water from Pakistan but that Pakistan is right to feel vulnerable because its water is downstream of In- dia’s. Washington has pressured the
two nations to settle their differ- ences. India and Pakistan have fought three major wars, and the conflict has kept much of Paki-
Politics aside, experts say, Pakistan’s water situation is reaching crisis proportions.
stan’s army focused eastward, not on Islamist insurgents. India wants Pakistan to target India- focused militants, and it is out- raged that Sayeed — whose ser- mons often call for jihad against India — remains free. India blamed the Mumbai attacks on Lashkar-i-Taiba.
Arab Israelis are accused of assisting Hezbollah
by Janine Zacharia
jerusalem — An Arab Israeli community activist was charged Thursday with espionage after al- legedly giving information about the location of Israeli defense fa- cilities to Lebanon’s militant Shi- ite Hezbollah movement. The indictment of Ameer Mak- houl, the general director of Itti- jah, a union of Arab organizations in Israel, coincided with what some here say is a broader cam- paign by Israel to intimidate ac- tivists who speak out against the idea of Israel remaining a home- land for Jews. When Israel was created in 1948, the Palestinian Arab com- munity was split between those who remained inside Israel’s bor- ders — and became Israeli citizens — and those who relocated to the West Bank, the Gaza Strip or else- where. Today, Arab Israelis make up one-fifth of Israel’s citizens. According to the indictment,
B.K. BANGASH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pakistani children play in the Chenab, which rises in India. Radicals say India is diverting water; India calls the claims “preposterous.”
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Yet even as the nations’ civilian leaders were building bridges, Pa- kistan’s military underscored the perceived Indian threat last month with large-scale military exercises near the border. With the Kashmir liberation struggle waning in Pakistan’s public con- sciousness, some analysts say Sayeed’s use of the water issue demonstrates his long-standing links to Pakistan’s powerful secu- rity establishment, elements of which do not favor peacemaking. “Hafiz Sayeed is trying to echo the establishment’s line,” said Ri- faat Hussain, a professor of secu- rity studies at Qaid-i-Azam Uni- versity in Islamabad. “The gov- ernment is trying to shift the focus of Kashmir as part of a jiha- dist thing . . . to an existential is- sue.”
Hydroelectric projects
Politics aside, experts say, Paki-
stan’s water situation is reaching crisis proportions. As the popula- tion has grown over six decades, per-capita water availability has dropped by more than two- thirds. About 90 percent of the water is used for agriculture, making it an economic lifeline but leaving little for human con- sumption. Inefficient irrigation and
drainage techniques have de- graded soil and worsened short- ages, forcing many small farmers to pump for groundwater. A se- vere electricity crisis means most rely on diesel-powered pumps, but fuel prices are rising, said M. Ibrahim Mughal, head of Agri Fo- rum, a farmers’ advocacy group. “You can’t do agriculture with-
out water,” he said. “What will happen? Hunger.” The Indus Waters Treaty,
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which India and Pakistan signed in 1960, gave each country un- fettered access to three rivers and limited rights to the other na- tion’s rivers. A joint commission oversees the treaty, which water experts say has worked fairly well.
Cooperation has frayed as wa- ter has grown scarcer and India has stepped up new hydroelectric projects in Kashmir. Those plans have raised alarm in Pakistan, where newspapers and politi- cians regularly accuse India of se- cret designs to weaken its enemy by diverting water. Pakistan’s In- dus Water Commissioner, Jamaat Ali Shah, said his country be- lieves that one proposed Indian dam on the Kishanganga, an In- dus tributary, violates the treaty
In 1960 India and Pakistan signed the Indus Waters Treaty, giving India near-exclusive use of the Sutlej, Beas and Ravi rivers before they enter Pakistan and giving Pakistan the Indus, Jhelum and Chenab rivers.
by making Pakistan’s own plans for a hydroelectric project down- stream unworkable. “Candidness and transparency should be there. It is not,” Shah said. In a speech last month, India’s ambassador to Pakistan, Sharat Sabharwal, said Pakistan has not detailed its complaints. Paki- stan’s water problems are attrib- utable to factors including cli- matic conditions, he said, and blaming India was meant to “in- flame public passions.”
‘Water declaration’
That is exactly what Sayeed is
trying to do, according to Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for the radical cleric’s Islamic charity, Ja- maat-ud-Dawa. The charity,
DIGEST
JAPAN
U.S. Marine base to stay on Okinawa
Washington and Tokyo agreed
Friday to keep a U.S. Marine base on the Japanese island of Okina- wa, reaffirming the importance of their security alliance and the need to maintain American troops in the country. In a joint statement, issued by
the two countries’ defense and foreign ministers, the allies agreed to move Marine Corps Air Station Futenma to Henoko, a less crowded part of the southern island. The decision is broadly in line with a 2006 deal but represents a major broken campaign promise on the part of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Hatoyama came to office in September promising to move the Marine base off the island. But after months of searching for a site and fruitless discussions with Washington and Okinawan officials, the prime minister said the base needed to remain on Okinawa. His decision has angered tens of thousands of island residents who complain about base-related noise, pollution and crime.
— Reuters
AFGHANISTAN
Pakistani Taliban leader reported slain
A Taliban leader who led an up- rising to wrest control of Paki- stan’s Swat Valley might have been killed Wednesday in a battle with security forces in eastern Af- ghanistan, Afghan security offi- cials said. Maulana Fazlullah and 700 of
his fighters, both Afghan and Pakistani, launched a siege two days ago on the Barg-e-Matal dis- trict in isolated Nurestan prov- ince, according to Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, the Afghan po- lice chief for the eastern border area. In the ensuing fighting, Fa- zlullah and at least six other Tali- ban fighters were killed, he said. But other provincial officials said they had not confirmed the death of Fazlullah, whose troops took over Pakistan’s bucolic northwestern region of Swat in 2007. Two security officials in the northwest said they also were un- sure whether he had died, though one said Fazlullah has been oper- ating from Afghanistan. Fazlullah’s death would prob-
ably have minimal meaning for Pakistan’s fight against its domes- tic Taliban insurgency, of which
Fazlullah was a part. His profile has dropped since Pakistan’s army pushed his forces out of Swat last year.
Residents of Swat, meanwhile, said they would wait to celebrate. “Fazlullah was ‘killed’ two or three times before by our military in the recent past,” said Zarshid Khan, 39, a bookseller in the Swat city of Mingora.
— Karin Brulliard
GAZA STRIP
Israel prepares to block aid flotilla
Israel readied its navy Thurs-
day to intercept a large flotilla of boats heading for the Gaza Strip with a cargo of aid and several hundred activists. Israeli officials said they will not allow the eight boats en route from Europe and Turkey to dock in Gaza but will permit the 10,000 tons of goods they are car- rying to be unloaded in Israel’s Ashdod port and trucked in to the Palestinian enclave. Gaza has been largely sealed
off from Egypt and Israel since the Islamist Hamas movement seized control of the coastal terri- tory in 2007. Activists say they are trans-
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which the United States and In- dia call a front for Lashkar-i- Taiba, recently sponsored the farmer protest and released a “water declaration” alleging that India had “virtually declared war on Pakistan by unlawfully con- structing dams and diverting Pakistani rivers.” Lashkar-i-Taiba has taken its
fight against India beyond the disputed terrain of Kashmir to stage attacks in Afghanistan and work with militant organizations in Pakistan’s northwest. But Sayeed has typically sought to up- hold the group’s Kashmir- focused reputation, making wa- ter a bit of a departure. Mujahid said Sayeed is helping desperate farmers pressure the government to solve their problems, not in- citing jihad. But peace talks are unlikely to help, he said. The dispute has hard-liners in both countries predicting war, alarming observers who say what should be a technical issue has veered into dangerous terrain. John Briscoe, a Harvard pro- fessor and former World Bank water specialist in Pakistan and India, said allegations of India’s “water robbery” are unfounded. But because India could influ- ence river flows into Pakistan, he said, the wisest solution would be for India to initiate talks and per- haps call for a permanent neutral party to implement the treaty. “On the Indian side, the last thing I would want to come into India-Pakistan relations is an is- sue as visceral as water,” Briscoe said. But, he added, “it’s all about politics and political will.”
brulliardk@washpost.com
Special correspondent Shaiq Hussain contributed to this report.
Makhoul met with a Hezbollah agent in Denmark in 2008 and agreed to serve as a secret source of information. Omar Saeed, an- other Arab Israeli activist, was also accused of having contact with Hezbollah, on a separate oc- casion, and transferring informa- tion that could be of assistance to it. Both men denied the accusa- tions.
Dan Rabinowitz, a professor of sociology at Tel Aviv University who has written a book about Arab Israelis, said the indict- ments coincided with growing fears in Israel regarding efforts, both domestically and abroad, to challenge the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Israel is trying “to make life more difficult and more compli- cated for political activists and for [nongovernmental organiza- tions], for people who might have reservations of how the state deals with its Palestinian citizens, all the way to the very foundation of the Jewish state,” Rabinowitz said. “Life is being made more dif- ficult for any people with a cri- tique of Israel.” A senior Israeli official denied
that Makhoul’s arrest was politi- cally motivated, saying it came be- cause he had “connections with certain enemies around us.” Much of the recent tension stems from Arab Israeli demon- strations against Israel’s widely criticized bombardment of Gaza in January 2009, a campaign car- ried out to stop rocket fire into Is- raeli towns. Perceiving the protests as dis-
loyal, Israel’s election committee subsequently tried to ban Arab Is- raeli parties from participating in the 2009 elections but was unsuc- cessful.
Other pending legislation seeks to limit fundraising by such or- ganizations as Adalah, a law cen- ter that advocates for Arab minor- ity rights in Israel and whose law- yers are representing Makhoul and Saeed.
zachariaj@washpost.com
FRIDAY,MAY 28, 2010
ERNESTO BENAVIDES/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES
PERU
New Yorker Lori Berenson, right, with her mother and husband after being freed from a Lima prison. Berenson won parole after serving 15 of 20 years for aiding a leftist rebel plot to seize Peru’s Congress.
porting needed supplies and will continue to try to reach Gaza. Israel has said there is no
shortage of humanitarian goods in the strip and described the dis- patch of the flotilla as an Israel- bashing stunt.
The boats are expected to ar- rive in Israeli waters on Saturday.
— Janine Zacharia
Blast kills 15 on Indian train: An
overnight passenger train was de- railed by an explosion and then
hit by another train early Friday as it traveled through a rebel stronghold of eastern India, a railway official said. At least 15 people were killed and 150 in- jured, a government official said.
— From news services
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