AT the time of writing, the sounds of war drums are hard and heavy, but it is as yet uncertain whether kinetic conflict will break out between India and Pakistan, and if it does, what shape and form it will take. While military experts debate the questions arising from kinetic conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbours, it is worth pointing out that much of what India actually wants out of this whole affair has already been obtained. And that is an exit from the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT).

Long after the dust has settled and Pahalgam has been added to a list that already has Pulwama and Uri on it, the enduring effects of India`s unilateral and illegal withdrawal from the treaty will be a big chokehold on Pakistan.

India`s withdrawal from the treaty amounts to illegally claiming the river water as its own property.

There is a history here, which suggests that this withdrawal from the treaty is what India wanted for a long time. It has used the present crisis as a distraction under which to take this step. The first mention made by India of its wish to withdraw from the treaty was in 2016, after the attack in Uri, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that `blood and water cannot flow together`. That statement was a trial balloon, and as it turned out, the first of a series of steps India took towards laying claim to the waters of the Indus river and the two western rivers that the treaty has given to Pakistan.

The second major step came in 2019. The real response to the attack in Pulwama did not come 11 days later in Balakot, as is commonly believed.

The real response came in August 2019, in the form of a presidential ordinance that illegally absorbed Indian-occupied Kashmir into the Indian federation, effectively revoking Article 370 of the Indian constitution. This was coupled with the passage of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.

Among the far-reaching legal changes brought in by this ordinance and the Act, one is of particular interest. The Act brought all land acquisition in Jammu and Kashmir under India`s central government law of 2013, and revoked Article35A which barred non-residents of Jammu and Kashmir from owning land inside the two territories. In the years that followed, rules governing land acquisition were modified further and the J&K Land Acquisition Act of 1934 was repealed altogether.

After these changes came a surge in projectrelated investment in the disputed territory. One report in the Indian media, citing government figures, says 6,851 project proposals totalling over $14 billion have been received since the changes allowed outsiders to acquire land and set up businesses inside the disputed territory.More significantly, ministries like railways, transport, defence, civil aviation and power have all acquired land in the disputed territory since the changes in 2019. More directly, the Ratle Hydropower Plant project that was initiated on the Chenab back in 2013, was challenged unsuccessfully by Pakistan in 2017 and fasttracked in India in 2021 when the government took over the project from its private sector sponsors.

In January 2023, under continued Pakistani opposition to the Ratle project and the ongoing dispute over the Kishenganga project, India finally served notice on Pakistan, citing a farreaching `fundamental change in circumstances` surrounding the treaty and saying it no longer reflected the current reality. In August 2024, it repeated the same argument. The wording is chosen to activate Article 62 of the Vienna Convention, which allows states to exit treatyobligations if there is a `fundamental change in circumstances` Quite obviously, India has not only been harbouring wishes to exit the IWT, but also preparing the ground for doing so for many years now. Having finally taken the step under the noise and fury of an ongoing stand-off, which drowns out the real importance of the step, it is now in a clear position to begin work on projects that could be capable of diverting large amounts of water from the upper reaches of the Indus river system. Pakistan has not succeeded in getting India to reverse its steps of 2019, through which it absorbed the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir into its federation. It now faces the uphill challenge of getting India to return to its commitments under the IWT.

There is another history to remember here. In the aftermath of the Mumbai incident in 2008, India campaigned against Pakistan`s financial system in the Financial Action Task Force for almost 10 years. I covered and wrote about this for years while it unfolded, and realised during the course of FATF-related developments that, on the Pakistani side, people were grossly underestimating the adverse impact the grey listing had on Pakistan`s economy, and equally importantly, how deeply they were misled about the real reasons why Pakistan was struggling to get its financial system cleared from the cloud of terror financing that the FATF had cast over it.

It was not until 2019 that the authorities took decisive action. Hafiz Saeed was finally arrested and later convicted on a number of charges and Jamaatud Dawa disbanded. Pakistan still spent three years trying to get off the FATF grey list.

This time we cannot afford to spend years before waking up to the real weight and importance of what India has done, under the cover provided by the sound and fury of the stand-off.

In 2019, India took the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and illegally claimed it as its own. Now it has done the same with the waters of the Indus river system, which by all rights belong to Pakistan. • The writer is a business and economy joumalist.