Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif warns of war over Indus water security

India on Tuesday strongly rejected comments made by Pakistan Defence Minister Khwaja Asif suggesting that Islamabad could resort to war if its water security was threatened, describing the remarks as an attempt to deflect attention from Pakistan’s own shortcomings and alleged human rights violations.VIDEO | Delhi: Responding to remarks of Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif regarding Indus Waters Treaty, MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) says, “Regarding the comments made by the Pakistani Defence Minister, we have seen reports on the matter. Such remarks are… pic.twitter.com/b07NHStAHd— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) June 23, 2026 Responding during the Ministry of External Affairs’ weekly media briefing, spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said New Delhi had taken note of the statements and categorically dismissed them as “fabricated claims.” He asserted that such rhetoric was aimed at concealing Pakistan’s internal failures and diverting focus from its human rights record.Jaiswal also referred to the situation in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, alleging that residents there have faced prolonged economic exploitation, denial of basic rights and administrative oppression under Pakistan’s control. He further accused Islamabad of employing harsh measures against civilians, including restrictions on essential supplies, internet shutdowns and the use of force, while urging the international community to hold Pakistan accountable for its actions.Pakistan Defence Minister Khawaja Asif Threatens War Against India Over Water Security Amid Suspended Indus Waters Treaty | VideoThe diplomatic exchange follows Khwaja Asif’s recent warning that Pakistan would consider military action if it believed India’s handling of water resources threatened its national security. Speaking amid concerns over Pakistan’s water crisis, Asif claimed that any move by India to disrupt water flows could trigger a strong response.India has maintained that its decision to keep the Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance remains unchanged. The move was announced after the Pahalgam terror attack that killed 26 people and formed part of a series of measures taken against Pakistan.Brokered by the World Bank, the Indus Waters Treaty governs the sharing of waters from the Indus river system, allocating the eastern rivers to India and the western rivers primarily to Pakistan while permitting certain limited uses by India.

Pakistan has doggedly pursued its terror agenda against India with the tenacity of a bloodhound. Over the years, India warned Pakistan to shun its terror doctrine after the 2016 surgical strikes and the Balakot airstrikes in 2019 or face severe consequences. However, Islamabad chose to whistle past the graveyard, ignoring the warning until it ultimately triggered Operation Sindoor last year following the Pahalgam massacre. However, India's mission to punish Pakistan for its bloodthirsty approach towards New Delhi was far from over. India started regulating waterflow towards Pakistan pushing Islamabad into a deep water crisis so much so that its Defence Minister Khawaja Asif issued an explicit war threat against India over water security on Sunday, June 22, 2026. Islamabad is panicking over New Delhi’s strategic decision to put the historic 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) into abeyance, using its hydrological leverage to pressure Islamabad to abandon its terror aganda against India. For more than six decades, the Indus Waters Treaty survived multiple full-scale wars and diplomatic breakdowns, standing as a globally praised model of transboundary water cooperation. However, India's policy shifted as it directly connected cross-border terrorism to Pakistan's downstream water security.What prompted India to suspend the treaty?The current standoff stems directly from a mass casualty event on April 22, 2025, when Pakistan-sponsored terrorists carried out a deadly terror attack in the Baisaran Valley near Pahalgam in Jammu and Kashmir. The attack, claimed by a Lashkar-e-Taiba, resulted in the deaths of 26 people, mostly tourists.Indus River Basin In a major departure from past policy, the Cabinet Committee on Security retaliated the next day by holding the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty in abeyance. New Delhi has remained steadfast in its stance that the treaty will remain suspended until Pakistan takes credible, permanent and verifiable action to dismantle its cross-border terror infrastructure.By placing the treaty in abeyance, India immediately halted the regular exchange of vital hydrological data including daily river flows, glacier melt statistics and flood warnings. Furthermore, India stopped the mandatory joint inspection tours carried out by the Permanent Indus Commission and began moving outside the treaty’s traditional constraints. This included flushing the reservoirs of two major upstream dams along the Indus river and announcing long-term intentions to build infrastructure capable of diverting water flows away from Pakistan entirely.Why Khawaja Asif is threatening war?Facing a severe economic and resource bottleneck, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif issued a public threat of war during an interview with the broadcaster ARY News. Asif declared that because water security is fundamentally tied to Pakistan's national survival, Islamabad will resort to military action if it confirms that India is moving at an "alarming speed" to disrupt or manipulate downstream water supplies.While Asif accused New Delhi of "weaponising water" and manipulating the Chenab River flows, his statements lacked technical backing. He went on to admit in the same interview that despite his claims of past inspections, he lacked any current information on upstream developments over the past year.Why Pakistan is vulnerable to upstream water alterationsPakistan is highly vulnerable to changes in river flows due to its heavy reliance on a single river system. Often described as an "Egyptian country built around a single river system," Pakistan draws roughly 96 percent of its average annual renewable water resources from the Indus River system. Compounding this structural dependency is a lack of adequate water storage facilities. Pakistan Water Crisis High seasonal variability dictates that Pakistan relies heavily on predictable daily river flows, but siltation has severely reduced the storage capacities of its major reservoirs, leaving local farmlands deeply exposed to flow irregularities.Furthermore, Pakistan is suffering from a massive domestic water crisis driven by decades of severe internal mismanagement. The availability of water has plummeted from 5,000 cubic meters per person during partition to less than 1,000 cubic meters today, pushing the country well into the zone of chronic water scarcity.Where and how will this affect the region?Under the original 1960 framework brokered by the World Bank, the three eastern rivers (the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej) were allocated to India, while the three western rivers (the Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab) were allocated to Pakistan, though India retained limited non-consumptive usage rights for hydroelectric power generation.India's ongoing construction of upstream projects, such as the 330-megawatt Kishenganga project on the Neelum River, has long stoked anxieties in Islamabad. Pakistan fears that India's cumulative upstream storage capacity gives New Delhi the physical power to manipulate the timing and quantity of water crossing the border. Without the data-sharing mechanisms of the treaty, Pakistan lacks the necessary advanced warnings to manage domestic irrigation or prepare for severe floods and droughts, severely damaging its agricultural sector, which consumes up to 92 percent of the country’s water.Broader implications for human securityAccording to international environmental policy experts Neda Zawahri and Melissa McCracken writing for Think Global Health, the collapse of transboundary water cooperation will yield disastrous consequences for human and environmental health in Pakistan. The country already struggles with a massive water contamination crisis where only 36 percent of the available water supply is safe to drink. Untreated industrial waste and heavy agricultural runoff have contaminated existing ground and surface waters, causing waterborne illnesses like dysentery, hepatitis and diarrhea to account for nearly 80 percent of all diseases nationwide.When upstream river flows slow or drop, water quality deteriorates exponentially as industrial effluents become more concentrated. Consequently, India's strategic leverage over the Indus system does not merely pressure Pakistan's military apparatus, it systematically strains its human capital, public health systems and agricultural economy. This demonstrates how Islamabad's long-term reliance on cross-border terrorism has directly compromised its own existential resource security.

The remark came after Union Jal Shakti Minister CR Patil suggested not a single drop of water will flow to Pakistan by 2028.

Islamabad: In a move marked by desperate rhetoric, Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has threatened war against India over water security. This sabre-rattling comes even as his government faces widespread domestic instability and an internal water crisis that experts attribute to gross mismanagement. Speaking to ARY News on Saturday, Asif declared, "The moment we feel that our national security, and water is part of our national security, is being threatened, we will go to war against India. Definitely."We will go to war with India if they do not change their behavior regarding water.Because water is life, and they are taking it away from us.• Pak Defence Minister: Khawaja Asif pic.twitter.com/GAuwUqtdVO— برهان الدین ‏| Burhan uddin (@burhan_uddin_0) June 20, 2026 He further claimed that military action would be a consideration should Islamabad find evidence that India is acting at an "alarming speed" to disrupt water supplies. These provocative comments arrive in the wake of New Delhi's firm suspension of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, a consequence of the Pakistan-sponsored terror attack in Pahalgam in April 2025, which claimed 26 lives. India has remained steadfast in its stance that the treaty will remain suspended until Pakistan takes credible, concrete action to dismantle its cross-border terror infrastructure.'Indus Water Treaty Was Unjust & One-Sided,' Says PM Modi While the World Bank-brokered treaty historically permits Pakistan to utilise 80 per cent of the Indus water basin for its agricultural needs, the nation's current failure to manage these resources has left its farmlands vulnerable. Asif attempted to deflect blame towards New Delhi, accusing it of "weaponising water", manipulating the Chenab River flows, and withholding data. However, his credibility was undermined when he admitted that, despite his claims that Pakistani teams had previously performed "around 115 inspections", he lacked any current information on developments over the past year.Pakistan Faces Power Crisis As LNG Supply Set To Drop, Coal Shortages And Domestic Mismanagement Threaten 30 Per Cent Electricity Output Meanwhile, Pakistan's internal failure is evident, with a severe water crisis now impacting nearly one-third of its population, specifically within Sindh and Balochistan. Official data from Sindh's irrigation department highlights a failing infrastructure: the North West Canal faces a 64.1 per cent deficit, while the Rice and Dadu Canals report shortages of 38 per cent and 82 per cent, respectively. As water levels at the critical Sukkur Barrage continue to collapse, local leaders are warning of an "economic massacre" caused by the state's inability to resolve internal water distribution disputes. (Except for the headline, this article has not been edited by FPJ's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)

Pakistan's Defence Minister Khawaja Asif threatens war against India over water security amid internal crisis.