Indus Treaty suspension is a wakeup call for Bangladesh

India-Bangladesh Ganga Water Treaty comes up for renewal next year.

The Dr. Muhammad Yunus-led interim government has introduced an interesting technique to dominate popular discourse. Controlling traditional media is part of the job, but their real expertise lies in crowding out social media. Almost everyone in the government shares elaborate opinions on Facebook about things way beyond their official brief.

There is reason to believe this is yet another “meticulously designed” plan to achieve political goals without accountability. Confront them, and they will delete the post and claim innocence. Yet, screenshots continue to dominate the discourse. This is exactly what happened after a top minister expressed a desire to "take away India’s Northeast." They did the same after the Kashmir attack.

Dr. Asif Nazrul, a former law professor at Dhaka University, is widely considered one of the key inspirations behind the student-led July uprising. He is now a powerful minister in the Yunus cabinet. On April 23, he shared a post by a Kolkata-based Congress sympathizer, describing the Kashmir carnage as a plot by the Modi government.

In his introduction, Nazrul said: “I condemn the killings. But to know who is behind it, read this post.” The narrative was promptly picked up by digital outlets. Pro-Pakistan Islamist media like The Daily Inqilab made it a top news. He later deleted the post. But this time, Bangladesh is faced with some hard choices.

Bangladesh is a lower riparian state, a source of vulnerability

Dhaka must stop playing the dangerous game of threatening India’s security by giving Pakistan’s ISI a free hand and inviting China to invest in strategically important areas close to India’s Siliguri Corridor and the Mongla Port in the Sundarbans. Otherwise, Delhi might consider far more serious measures than cancelling the transshipment facility or scrapping a few infrastructure projects.

The suspension of the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty—which survived three Indo-Pak wars (including Kargil) and numerous terrorist attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai carnage—has sent shockwaves through Bangladesh, a lower riparian state. The concern is genuine, especially as the 30-year-old Ganga Water Treaty comes up for renewal next year.

Beyond the Ganga, at least two other major rivers—the Teesta and the Brahmaputra—enter Bangladesh, along with hundreds of others like the Barak and the Feni. In 2019, India signed a water-sharing pact on the Feni. There are no agreements on the others, but that doesn’t lessen the concern. India shares real-time meteorological data, including flood alerts, with Dhaka. Even a brief disruption in information flow could wreak havoc in Bangladesh.

Taking a leaf out of the China playbook

Delhi wouldn’t be an exception is in weaponizing water or weather. Most of the major rivers in the North originate in Tibet. Whenever political relations sour, information flow from Beijing slows. Fortunately, the major catchment areas of those rivers—including the Ganga and the Brahmaputra—are in India. Moreover, satellites keep India alert. As a further precaution, Delhi is building a series of large hydropower projects with vast reservoirs in the Northeast. These will help manage unexpected variations in upstream discharge.

The point is this: Bangladesh must realize that if the US can impose reciprocal tariffs even on long-term trade partners like Canada and Mexico, then no relationship or agreement is beyond scrutiny. India avoids using hard power because it doesn’t want to be distracted from its growth trajectory. It is one of the few large economies to have averaged over 6 percent growth since liberalization in 1991.

Dhaka is welcome to benefit from India's growth story in exchange for ensuring India's security. But if it chooses to follow in Pakistan’s footsteps, it will have to pay the price. Sheikh Hasina understood this, and the benefits extended not only to the region but to the entire BBIN (Bhutan-Bangladesh-India-Nepal) subregion.

Yunus is hurting Bangladesh’s economic prospects

Formed in 2015, the grouping was designed to bypass the dysfunctional South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and move forward.

Unfortunately, Dr. Yunus began his tenure by reversing this paradigm. He never mentioned BBIN. Instead, he pivoted toward closer Bangladesh-Pakistan relations. In just eight months, the bonhomie between the two reached historic highs—so much so that Bangladesh removed the physical verification requirement for Pakistani shipments, ignoring India's security concerns.

Everyone is aware of SAARC’s failures and the reasons behind them. Any undergraduate economics student could tell you that Bangladesh or the region has little to gain from Pakistan economically. Yet Yunus is championing SAARC, solely to team up with Islamabad and politicize relations with India.

This is a decades-old scheme with no place in today’s geopolitics, where India is pursuing global ambitions. On Wednesday, Modi effectively severed formal ties with Pakistan. All Pakistani nationals were ordered to leave the country within 48 hours. The SAARC visa exemption scheme is no longer available to Pakistanis.

Yunus began his tenure by exploiting India’s security concerns in the Northeast. He recently invited China to invest in Bangladesh with the goal of capturing the northeastern Indian market—without involving Delhi as a stakeholder.

Bangladesh has a long history of flirting with terror. It once gave safe haven to northeastern insurgents. The 10-truck arms haul case of 2004 is a stark reminder of its support—or intended support—for cross-border terrorism. The Yunus administration ensured the acquittal of all the accused in that case.

“New Bangladesh” sports Al-Qaeda flags in Dhaka

The chief of Ansarullah Bangla Team, a deadly terrorist organization, is now a free man. Posters of the banned Hizb-ut Tahrir are widespread in Bangladesh. Al-Qaeda flags are a common sight in Dhaka. Are these part of Dr. Yunus’s plan to build a “New Bangladesh”?

The recent actions taken against Pakistan indicate a shift in India’s mindset towards terror. This shift began after the Pulwama attack in 2019. The Kashmir attack increased the resolve. Hopefully, Bangladesh is decoding it right.