Indus Water Treaty row: Asim Munir’s failed gamble

Pakistan has gone ballistic against India over the Indus Water Treaty (IWT). Not a day passes when the senior leadership of the Shehbaz Sharif government and its army generals do not threaten India with a decapitation-menu option. "Stop our water and we will..." These phantasmagoric expressions of Pakistan’s top brass read more like the wish list of a comic-book axe murderer rather than a serious policy announcement by a balanced and mature state — neither of which is Pakistan. India, of course, has responded with sangfroid disdain. The situation would remain status quo ante, says the MEA (Ministry of External Affairs), which means the treaty would be held in abeyance until Pakistan stops supporting cross-border terrorism.

So much for Pakistani warnings and threats. But the question arises: what has rattled Pakistan so much that it has outdone itself in spoken vulgarity?

The answer to this puzzle lies in the manner in which Pakistan’s de facto ruler, Asim Munir, has been running his country and what has come out of it. To do a quick recap, it was in June 2019 when Imran Khan sacked Asim Munir as head of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence). Now it is Asim Munir’s turn. He makes sure Imran Khan stays locked up in prison. But that would not have been enough. Munir is aware that Imran Khan enjoys widespread grassroots popularity. And the only way for people to forget him would be to supplant Imran Khan’s popularity with his own.

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To do that, Asim Munir decided a while back to emerge as the greatest strongman general Pakistan has ever seen. Professionally running the armed forces or even governing the country was the second priority.

Look at the way he has gone about doing that.

He neutered both the PPP (Pakistan People’s Party) and Imran Khan’s party, PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf), into inaction and irrelevance. The right wing and religious orthodoxy came completely over to his side. He split the liberal community in half, with quasi-liberals like Najam Sethi completely backing him.

To further burnish his strongman image among the Pakistani masses, he embarked on a programme of needling India. He categorised Hinduism as the distinct ‘other’ in Parliament, charting his own path and dragging the country along with it as an Islamic zealot. He staged the Pahalgam attack to send a message to his countrymen that he was a man of daring and ruthless planning. Operation Sindoor followed, and Pakistani military defences were ripped open by India. But Asim Munir survived that humiliation by bringing into play his bag of tricks, learnt as spy chief of the ISI.

His minions contacted sympathetic journalists in biased Western media outlets to build a concocted story that Pakistan had shot down several Indian jets in the short but intense war. His fakers carpet-bombed social media with AI-concocted war losses for India. He climbed atop a tank, à la Patton, to showcase his fictional victory. Delirious masses in Pakistan went wild. They could not get enough of their new strongman. Even Western polity and media half-believed him.

He quickly filled the dangerous vacuum created by the ongoing tensions between Washington and New Delhi over trade matters and positioned himself. The general, in a remarkable short span of time, became the ‘favourite field marshal’ of President Trump.

The Gulf war came out of nowhere, and Asim Munir was your man for all seasons. He held parleys with Tehran and Vice President Vance, emerging as part consigliere to President Trump and part confidant of Masoud Pezeshkian.

The international spotlight was on Asim Munir, and it went to his head. He calculated compensation if he landed a deal signed between Iran and the United States. Compensation in two parts: loans and monies from international multilateral lending organisations to keep the comatose Pakistani economy afloat. But more than that, he was certain that, for services rendered, America would pull up India over its intransigence on the Indus Water Treaty and make India fall in line with the earlier status quo ante.

Neither of his suppositions came true. And that is the real story here, which is making the Pakistani establishment see red against India.

India weathered the economic tumult against both America and the energy crisis triggered by the Gulf war by being classic, stodgy but hard-working India. This translated into a non-flashy but determined outreach to the West, including America, the European Union and even countries of the Indo-Pacific. Internally, India armed itself as never before, preparing for the worst or, at the very least, an Operation Sindoor 2.0. Then India secured its energy security by diversifying its basket of oil, natural gas and LPG importers. Amid all this, the fearsome BrahMos missile became an instrument of successful diplomacy, as more and more countries, especially those opposed to China, coveted the weapon.

After an on-off agreement was signed between Iran and America, Asim Munir, strutting the world stage, expected his compensation. None came. Instead of pulling up India on IWT, America had begun cosying up to India. They realised during the Gulf war that practically no country had stood by them. It made them realise that both in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, India was the country that really mattered, especially against China. They wanted India on board again. For the time being, Asim Munir had served his purpose for them. Nothing would be tossed his way.

There was no joy for Asim Munir from the EU either, if he had hoped that he could get them to pull up India on the Indus Water Treaty. The EU countries were, in fact, tripping over themselves to sign FTAs with India and forge new economic partnerships.

And it was terrible news back home for Asim Munir. Pakistan-occupied Kashmir was on fire with unrest. The situation in Balochistan and relations with the Afghan Taliban had only worsened. The Pakistani army was exhausted with internal firefighting. And, to make matters worse, India had announced a slew of infrastructure projects on both the eastern and western rivers of the Indus river system. It was already moderating waters of the Chenab and restricting downstream flow.

Pakistani agriculture, in the long run, would not be able to survive these blows.

While the general was away touring the world stage in a three-piece suit, Pakistan fell even further down the hole it had dug for itself. And, at least for now, a vituperative word assault is the only weapon Pakistan can brandish and fling against India. As if India could be bothered with it.

(Juggi Bhasin is a veteran TV journalist, author and geopolitical commentator. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)