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Pakistan's recent hysteria over India violating the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) and cutting off its lifeline must be examined and understood within the context of its internal struggle for water resources. Pakistan has an acute need to harness the Indus waters and it has made a mess out of its internal water management. The Pakistan Senate's technical committee on water resources has concluded that neither Kalabagh nor Bhasha are appropriate, and that a dam near Skardu is more convenient. What are the hindrances to this project taking off? Does the handling of the obstacles have a bearing on the water disputes between India and Pakistan?

The project for this dam was prepared by Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) in 2000 after the prospects for the construction of the proposed Kalabagh dam seemed extremely bleak due to consistent and fierce opposition by the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Sindh provinces.

The Skardu Dam will have a storage capacity of 35 million acres feet (MAF) as against the Kalabagh and Bhasha dams' 6.1 MAF and 7.3 MAF respectively. The committee has not reached a consensus over the project. The disagreements arise on the grounds of the filling criteria, the operation of the link canals, the total availability of water and its distribution among the provinces. The committee has recommended that these differences should be settled by the Council of Common Interest (CCI), which unfortunately does not have a very good record of drawing up final agreements.

The 35 MAF dam will be the third largest reservoir in the world after the Aswan High Dam in Egypt and Three Gorges Dam in China, followed by a fourth dam on the Colorado river in the United States. It is considered to be the most cost effective and is being projected as the solution to Pakistan's water management problem.

However, the Skardu Dam would have serious environmental and humanitarian repercussions. It would submerge the entire Skardu Valley up to certain parts of Shigar (gateway to K2). It would submerge Baltistan and 300,000 Baltis would be displaced. The distinct cultural identity and heritage of the Baltis is at risk, along with several historical monuments dating back to the Ashoka period. Ecologists contend that the sensitive mountain ecology would be drastically affected by a minor shift in the hydrological cycle due to permanent storage of a large water body. Many sensitive military installations along with the only airport in Baltistan region would be submerged. Skardu - the capital of Baltistan or Little Tibet, houses the military command and control hub for protection of the critical Pakistan-China road link, and maintenance of status quo in Gultari, Ladakh and Siachen sectors.

The Skardu Project envisages minimum benefits to people in this region. The local population has no rights over these river waters, whereas the Mangla Dam is meant to provide the energy and water requirements of Punjab.

This Punjab centric context of river projects planned in Pakistan is the main road block to the optimal harnessing of river water. Developmental inequities among the provinces are being converted into objections for various river projects. This leads to the Indus waters flowing into the sea, without optimal utilisation, a situation which Pakistan can ill afford. Considering the future scenario with changing climate patterns and shrinking glaciers, the increased flow of water into the rivers over the next three decades needs to be tapped urgently. As the pressure to do this mounts on the Pakistani government, the internal divisions over the projects also gets magnified.

Pakistan seeks to answer its quest for water security by blaming India as the culprit responsible for its water woes, which appeases the hard-line political groups in Pakistan who feel that the government is compromising their national interests in the ongoing peace process. Rethinking of the Skardu Project as being designed to develop the marginalised regions of PoK would not only pave the way for better development and integration of the remote region, but also smoothen out the road for reaching a consensus on Indian river projects planned on the west flowing rivers for the development of Jammu and Kashmir.

Unless a broad consensus is evolved for the Skardu Dam by sorting out provincial differences and devising measures that would also be in the interest of the other provinces and the Northern Areas, Pakistan's quest for large storage structures cannot materialise. With Skardu being put forward as the most likely alternative to other impending projects, its humanitarian and environmental impacts need to looked into and effective mechanisms evolved to mitigate other damages. Otherwise the political objections to Indian river projects over the west flowing rivers will only tend to get louder.