http://www.dawn.com/2008/06/11/top10.htm

DAWN, Karachi, Pakistan
June 11, 2008 Wednesday Jamadi-us-Sani 06, 1429

Baglihar sets basis to resolve other disputes, says report
By Anwar Iqbal

WASHINGTON, June 10: The Baglihar agreement provides a sound basis for
the settlement of future water disputes between India and Pakistan,
says a report published recently.

The report notes that while settling the India-Pakistan dispute over a
dam on the Chenab River, the agreement reinterpreted the Indus Water
Treaty in a way that it sets precedents for future settlements as
well.

On Jan 5, 2005, Pakistan asked the World Bank to appoint a neutral
expert to settle “a difference” with India over the Baglihar dam
because Islamabad believed that the project violated the 1960 Indus
Water Treaty for the distribution of rivers water between the two
states.

On May 10, 2005, the bank appointed Swiss engineer Raymond Lafitte as
a neutral expert for settling the dispute and on Feb 12, 2007 he
delivered to the ambassadors of India and Pakistan in Bern,
Switzerland, signed copies of his final decision.

“The decision “will most likely influence any future interpretation of
the Indus Water Treaty,” observed Salman M. A. Salman, a lead counsel
of the World Bank, who has written a detailed report on how the
neutral expert resolved the issue.

“Undoubtedly, the process has set precedents in a number of aspects”
and “will most likely influence any future interpretation of the Indus
Water Treaty,” he noted.

The decision, he said, underscores the notion of the peaceful
settlement of international water disputes and “is likely to reshape
many of the understandings about the treaty.”

According to the report, Pakistan have viewed the difference as
largely a legal one, involving the interpretation of the treaty, while
India viewed it mainly as an engineering one, regarding hydropower
plants.

The neutral expert concluded that the rights and obligations of the
parties under the treaty should be read in the light of new technical
norms and new standards as provided for by the treaty.

This meant that the Baglihar difference was addressed bearing in mind
the technical standards for hydropower plants as they have developed
in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and not as perceived
and thought of in 1950s when the treaty was negotiated.

The issues contested by the two parties included: maximum design
flood, spillway, being ungated or gated, spillway, level of the gates,
artificial raising of the water level, pondage, and level of the power
intake.

The first issue on the maximum design flood related to the calculation
of the maximum amount of water which can arrive at the dam.

In view of many uncertainties of flood analysis, the neutral expert
retained the value proposed by India of 16,500 m3/s, as opposed to
14,900 m3/s proposed by Pakistan, for the peak discharge of the design
flood.

He noted that climate change, with the possible associated increase in
floods, also encourages a prudent approach.

On the second issue of a gated or ungated spillway, Pakistan
considered that a gated spillway was not necessary, and would allow
India to control the flow of the river.

The neutral expert determined that the conditions of the site,
including hydrology, sediment yield, topography, geology and
seismicity, require a gated spillway.

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http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\02\14\story_14-2-2007_pg3_1

Daily Times, Lahore, Pakistan
Wednesday, February 14, 2007

EDITORIAL: Baglihar Dam and our ‘lower riparian alarmism’

There are lessons to be drawn from the World Bank verdict on the
Baglihar Dam dispute between Pakistan and India. The verdict has
mostly gone in India’s favour, but it is not surprising that Pakistan
has claimed ‘victory’. The federal water and power minister, Liaquat
Jatoi, says that the World Bank expert Professor Raymond Lafitte has
“determined that the design of Baglihar Dam violates the Indus Waters
Treaty and directed India to lower the height of the proposed
reservoir on the Chenab in Indian-held Kashmir”. But that is not
really true.

Pakistan had raised four objections of which “three have been accepted
by the expert”. The expert has asked India to reduce the height of the
dam from 144.5 metres to 143 metres (sic!). The expert has also
reduced the size of the reservoir from 37.722 million cubic metres
(MCM) to 32.56 MCM (sic!). According to the minister, India’s planned
spillways for the dam — Pakistan’s major source of objection — were
found in conformity with international practices, but India’s design
and analysis were found to be incorrect. This is where the obfuscation
has clearly crept into the media management.

A glance at what India has said about the World Bank decision seems to
point to panic buttons being pressed on the Pakistani side. The
Baglihar Dam is essentially on line and the changes recommended by the
expert are only minor in nature. New Delhi has announced that once
again Pakistan has been proved wrong. The Indian union minister for
water resources, Prof Saifuddin Soz, a Kashmiri, said there would be
no loss of power generation from the reduction in the dam’s height. He
said India had offered to make this change before Pakistan had
approached the World Bank. He said Pakistan’s biggest objection, the
installation of the sluice spillway gates, had been rejected.

Pakistan went to the World Bank in 2005 objecting to India’s design
and height of the dam on the Chenab River awarded to Pakistan under
the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty (IWT). India was not allowed to use its
waters but was permitted to produce electricity from its waters.
Pakistan as a lower riparian suspected that the dam had been designed
to store more water than was allowed for purposes of electricity
generation. Many meetings were held, but Pakistani experts were not
able to overcome their suspicion that India was constructing “gate-
like structures likely to affect Pakistan’s agriculture by making it
lose 8,000 cusecs of water every day”.

So the fact is that Islamabad, no matter how it looks at the World
Bank verdict, cannot claim victory, if only because its objection to
the spillway gates has been set aside. While there is no harm in
claiming victory — which purports to convey to the people of Pakistan
that India has been once again defeated — it would be a mistake not to
learn all the lessons embedded in the water dispute and its final
denouement. While the matter was given in the hands of specialists, no
estimate was made of the psychological orientation of the Pakistani
bureaucrat going to India and accepting the Baglihar Dam design. In
other words, even a Pakistani expert — usually a bureaucrat — is
affected by the lower riparian alarmism of the nation.

The Baglihar Dam began to be discussed in 1992 and Pakistan lost no
time in invoking the IWT to say that it might not allow it. After
that, till 2005, when the two countries went for arbitration, a lot of
damage was done to Pak-India relations. The quarrel over the dam
unfolded during the worst years of the Kashmir jihad. Both sides
deployed enormous amounts of agitprop to smear each other and arouse
fear and loathing. In lower riparian Pakistan those in charge of jihad
started naming the water issue as one of the reasons behind the covert
war. The public mind in Pakistan was poisoned till the elected
governments were destabilised finding themselves unable to allay the
sense of insecurity of the people.

Pakistan is not unfamiliar with the mind of the lower riparian. One
simply has to examine the Sindhi rejection of the Kalabagh Dam to
understand its depth and in some ways its helplessness. Pakistan,
therefore, must learn to approach the water problems with upper
riparian India with a new non-alarmist attitude, so that its
specialists and experts don’t feel under pressure to play the role of
spoilers rather than fair-minded evaluators.

There are other dams in contention: the Kishenganga hydroelectric
project on the Neelum River, which is a tributary to the Jhelum, which
belongs to Pakistan. Uri-II on the Jhelum River in Baramulla District,
the Pakul Dal and the Burser Dams, both on the Marusundar, a tributary
of the Chenab River in Doda district. Unless ‘nuclear powers’ India
and Pakistan develop a friendly working relationship, the coming years
will bring more tension and conflict, dwarfing the old Kashmir
dispute. The World Bank arbitration tells us that Pakistan must become
more cautious in its approach while remaining fully vigilant over its
rights under the Indus Waters Treaty.

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