By LYDIA POLGREEN and SABRINA TAVERNISE

BANDIPORE, Kashmir ? In this high Himalayan valley on the Indian-controlled side of Kashmir, the latest battle line between India and Pakistan has been drawn. This time it is not the ground underfoot, which has been disputed since the bloody partition of British India in 1947, but the water hurtling from mountain glaciers to parched farmers’ fields in Pakistan’s agricultural heartland.

Indian workers here are racing to build an expensive hydroelectric dam in a remote valley near here, one of several India plans to build over the next decade to feed its rapidly growing but power-starved economy. In Pakistan, the project raises fears that India, its archrival and the upriver nation, would have the power to manipulate the water flowing to its agriculture industry ? a quarter of its economy and employer of half its population.

Pakistanis fear that a new Indian dam could threaten their agriculture industry.
Workers on the Bandipore project.

In May it filed a case with the international arbitration court to stop it. Water has become a growing source of tension in many parts of the world . Several African countries are arguing over water rights to the Nile. Israel and Jordan have competing claims to the Jordan River. Across the Himalayas, China’s own dam projects have piqued India, a rival for regional, and even global, power. But the fight here is adding a new layer of volatility at a critical moment to one of the most fraught relationships anywhere, one between deeply distrustful, nuclear-armed nations who have already fought three wars. The dispute threatens to upset delicate negotiations to renew peace talks, on hold since Pakistani militants killed at least 163 people in attacks in Mumbai, India, in November 2008.

The United States has been particularly keen to ease tensions so that Pakistan can divert troops and materiel from its border with India to its frontier with Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents. With their populations rapidly expanding, water is critical to both nations.

Pakistan has also become an increasingly fertile recruiting ground for militant groups, who play on a lack of opportunity and abundant anti-India sentiment. The rivers that traverse Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province , are the country’s lifeline, and the dispute over their use goes to the heart of its fears about its larger neighbor.

For India, the hydroprojects are vital to harnessing Himalayan water to fill in the serious energy shortfalls that crimp its economy. While the Kishenganga dam is allowed under a 50-year-old treaty, the dispute is over how it should be built and the timely release of water. Pakistan contends that having the drainage at the base of the dam will allow India to manipulate the water flow when it wants; for example, during a crucial period of a planting season.

“It makes Pakistan very vulnerable,” said a lawyer who has worked on past water cases for Pakistan. “You can’t just tell us, ‘Hey, you should trust us.’ We don’t .” India has rejected any suggestion that it has

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tried to steal water. In a speech on June 13, India’s foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, called such allegations “breast-beating propaganda,” adding that “the myth of water theft does not stand the test of rational scrutiny .” Water experts concur, but say Pakistan has a legitimate cause for concern. If India chooses to fill its dams at a crucial time for Pakistan, it has the potential to ruin a crop. John Briscoe, an expert on South Asia’s water issues at Harvard University, estimates that if India builds all its planned projects, it could have the capacity of holding up a month’s worth of river flow during Pakistan’s critical dry season, enough to wreck an entire planting season. Here in Bandipore, national pride is at stake, workers said. “This dam is a matter of our national prestige,” one of the engineers on the project said. “It is our right to build this dam, and our future depends on it.” Pakistanis say they have reason to be worried. In 1948, an administrator in India shut off the water supply to a number of canals in Pakistani Punjab. Indian authorities later said it was a bureaucratic mix-up, but in Pakistan, the memory lingers. “Once you’ve had a gun put to your head and it’s been cocked, you don’t forget it,” said the lawyer, who asked that his name not be used . A water shortage in Pakistan, and the country’s inability to store large quantities of water, has made matters worse. Pakistan is about to slip into a category of country the United Nations defines as “water scarce.” “They are confronting a very serious issue,” said a senior American official in Islamabad. “There’s a high anxiety, and it’s not misplaced.” Kaiser Bengali, an economist, argues that the real way to ease Pakistan’s water crisis is to introduce water conservation methods and modern farming techniques. In a country where summer temperatures reach 49 degrees Celsius, as much as 40 percent of Pakistan’s water is lost before even reaching the roots of the plants, experts say. The dispute would not be nearly as acute, experts said, if India and Pakistan talked . “It’s like a bad marriage ,” the Pakistani lawyer said. “Would it be better if we were communicating openly? Yes. But in the present circumstances we are not.


Hari Kumar contributed reporting
from New Delhi.