ISLAMABAD: India’s threats to choke off Pakistan’s share of the Indus River amount to a crime against humanity, a senior Chinese foreign policy analyst told an Islamabad seminar Monday, calling for Beijing and Islamabad to jointly force compliance with the six-decade-old Indus Waters Treaty.
Dr. Victor Gao, vice president of the Center for China and Globalization, didn’t mince words. The world needs to stop India by every means available, he told the gathering. Then he went further: bring China into the treaty itself, he argued, and the agreement gains the weight and permanence it currently lacks.
Victor Gao Backs Pakistan
“I would tell India: do not do unto others what you would not want done unto you,” Gao said. He reminded the room that India isn’t even the only upper riparian state on the Indus system, a fact he says rarely surfaces in the current standoff. Pakistan and China, working together with genuine mutual respect, can accomplish far more than either country alone, he added.
Gao traced the crisis back roughly a year, to when Indian officials first started threatening to dam rivers feeding Pakistan. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vow that not one drop of Indus water would reach Pakistani soil triggered the alarm, Gao said. Cutting water flow to tens of millions of people qualifies as a war crime even in wartime, he argued and he says he told India exactly that at the time.
China Pakistan Indus Waters Treaty
He wants the treaty’s protections enforced without exception. Nations need to expose treaty violations publicly, he told the seminar, rather than let them slide unchallenged. Gao said he personally backs the positions Pakistani speakers laid out at the event and pressed Beijing and Islamabad to cooperate fully on protecting the agreement going forward.
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This isn’t new territory for Gao. He made nearly identical arguments on Indian television last year, telling viewers there directly that India sits downstream of China’s own river systems the same vulnerability New Delhi now threatens to exploit against Pakistan. Do not do to others what you wouldn’t want done to yourself, he repeated then too. Blocking Pakistan’s water, he warned, crosses into crimes against humanity.
Indus Waters Treaty Under Pressure
The World Bank brokered the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960, and it survived three wars between India and Pakistan without formal suspension until the past year’s escalation pushed it toward collapse. Gao’s push to fold China into the framework signals a real shift in how Chinese analysts now frame Beijing’s stake in South Asian water politics, especially given China’s own upstream position over rivers that eventually shape both Indian and Pakistani water security.
Gao’s profile gives the remarks extra weight. He sits at one of China’s most influential globalization think tanks and has repeatedly taken his case straight to Indian audiences rather than just Chinese or Pakistani ones. Whether Beijing or Islamabad actually act on his proposal remains unclear. But his comments add international pressure to a dispute now touching the water security of more than 250 million people across the Indus basin.
