Pakistan has ceased to end its vitriolic rhetoric against India, as its Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Tuesday raised the Indus water dispute, asserting that Pakistan would not permit the loss of “even one drop” of its share. His comments came against the backdrop of heightened tensions following New Delhi’s decision to put the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) on hold after the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack.
India’s move — part of a series of punitive measures against Islamabad — has been met with repeated warnings from Pakistan, which insists any attempt to block water will be considered an act of war.
“I want to tell the enemy today that if you threaten to hold our water, then keep this in mind that you cannot snatch even one drop of Pakistan,” Sharif said at a ceremony, as quoted by news agency PTI. He further cautioned India: “If you attempt such an act, you will be again taught such a lesson that you will be left holding your ears.”
Bilawal Bhutto, Army Chief’s Recent Anti-India Rhetoric
Earlier, former foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari denounced the IWT suspension as “an attack on the Indus Valley Civilisation” and vowed the nation would not yield if compelled into conflict. In further remarks, he also called India’s Indus Waters Treaty move the “biggest attack” on the Sindhu River. “People of Sindh raise their voices and reach the ground to save Sindhu (river) when such an attack is launched,” he said.
During an address to the Pakistani diaspora in Tampa, Florida, Pakistan Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir was quoted by Dawn as saying Islamabad would destroy any dam built to restrict water to Pakistan.
“We will wait for India to build a dam, and when they do so, we will destroy it,” he reportedly said. “The Indus River is not the Indians’ family property. We have no shortage of resources to undo the Indian designs to stop the river.”
Munir’s trip to the US also saw him make remarks laced with nuclear threats. Addressing the Pakistani diaspora in Tampa, he reportedly said: “We are a nuclear nation. If we think we are going down, we’ll take half the world down with us.”
He warned that Pakistani nuclear weapons could be deployed in the event of an existential threat from India and repeated his vow to target Indian infrastructure if water was blocked.
The row comes in the wake of India launching Operation Sindoor on 7 May, targeting terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The operation was retaliation for the Pahalgam attack that killed 26 civilians. Both sides reached an understanding on 10 May to halt hostilities after four days of drone and missile strikes.
India dismisses Pakistan’s ‘nuclear blackmail’
Responding from New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) described Munir’s nuclear warning as Pakistan’s “stock-in-trade” and said the comments “reinforced the well-held doubts about the integrity of nuclear command and control in Pakistan, where the military is hand-in-glove with terrorist groups.”
“It is regrettable that these remarks should have been made from the soil of a friendly third country,” the MEA stated, in an apparent reference to the United States. It added that India would “not give in to nuclear blackmail” and would take all necessary steps to safeguard national security.
Meanwhile, Islamabad on Monday reiterated its commitment to fully implementing the Indus Waters Treaty and urged New Delhi to “immediately resume” normal operations under the pact, which India has kept in abeyance since May.
