For generations, families living in eastern Pakistan near the border with India have learned to move quickly when danger comes close.
But this year, one danger has followed another. Sharif Muhammad and his family of seven have been uprooted twice — first in the spring, when Pakistan and India briefly went to war, and again last week, when floodwaters engulfed their village.
“We know evacuation drills from border tensions,” said Mr. Muhammad, a livestock trader. “Now floods force us to carry charpoys and wheat sacks and relocate cattle to safer places. We suffer whether it is war or water.”
Thousands of families who live near the border, like Mr. Muhammad’s, were evacuated in April as tensions escalated between Pakistan and India, sparked by a terrorist attack in the Indian-administered part of Kashmir. In early May, a weeklong military conflict erupted between the two archrivals.
Mr. Muhammad’s family came home soon after the fighting stopped. But they left again last week, as the Sutlej River surged and flooded their home.
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis near the border have been subjected to such forced displacements many times over the years: during wars between India and Pakistan in 1965 and 1971; in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when tensions between the nations spiked; and during devastating floods in 1955 and 1988.
Pakistan and India share several major rivers, including the Sutlej and the Ravi, which have long sustained local people’s livelihoods but have also fueled disputes between the countries.
The rivers’ shifting courses and the riverine terrain have complicated border demarcation for decades, said Ilyas Chattha, a Lahore-based historian who wrote a book about the region, “The Punjab Borderland.” The volatile rivers have even changed the border lines, transferring about 18,000 acres of land to Pakistan and some 16,000 acres to India between 1947 and 1957, he said.
“Until 1975, the two countries struggled to maintain a fixed border, as markers were often washed away by the floods or dismantled by border people,” Mr. Chattha said.
This year’s deadly monsoon season has killed hundreds of people in Pakistan and India and displaced hundreds of thousands more. In parts of both countries, the floods were the worst in decades.
Last week, Pakistani officials accused India of worsening the floods by releasing water from upstream dams into Pakistan, causing rivers to rise even higher. The officials said that while India had told them that water would be released, it had failed to specify the timing or the volume of water, as it is required to do under a decades-old treaty that governs the sharing of water.
Indian officials said their country’s representatives in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, had passed on warnings about potential flooding “as a humanitarian gesture.” But during the recent hostilities, India suspended the water-sharing treaty. Pakistan has accused its neighbor of “weaponizing water.”
Independent experts have cast doubt on claims that India’s actions dramatically worsened the destruction in Pakistan.
“When capacity is exceeded, it doesn’t matter whether you are India or Pakistan; you have to release water in order to save dams,” said Daanish Mustafa, a Pakistani environmental expert and professor of geography at King’s College London. “Let’s not forget that hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by these floods in India as well.”
Sahiba Maqbool, an international law expert who teaches at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, questioned the viability of India’s suspension of the treaty, noting that it is still bound by other international obligations to prevent deaths and property damage. But in any case, she said, nothing would have stopped the deluge.
“What does suspending it mean in practice? You cannot control the natural course of water bodies,” Ms. Maqbool said.
On Monday, Pakistani officials warned that they expected India to send more water across the border, which they said would raise the risk of more devastating floods and heavy losses to crops and livestock. Countless fields of rice, maize and sweet potato have already been submerged.
“In Pakistan, farmers have no system of crop or livestock insurance, while the government’s fiscal response cannot cover all damages and often excludes landless farmers,” said Akram Khaskheli, the head of an independent farmers’ rights group.
He said floods in 2022 had offered a stark warning about Pakistan’s economy and its food security. Afterward, prices of essential staples rose for months, and millions of people struggled to feed their families.
“Displacement is not our main concern,” said Nasir Ali, a 26-year-old farmer grazing his cattle near a border post last week. “Whether floods came from nature or India, our real worry is repaying debts after crop losses.”
Pragati K.B. contributed reporting from New Delhi, and Elian Peltier from Islamabad, Pakistan.
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