Pakistan, May 14 -- For decades, the debate over the Indus Waters Treaty centred on one question: could India divert the western rivers allocated to Pakistan? That framing shaped political rhetoric and diplomatic engagement for half a century. The hydrographs now emerging from the Chenab at Marala suggest the real dispute has moved elsewhere.

Official WAPDA telemetry shows a river behaving less like a naturally flowing Himalayan system and more like a regulated hydraulic corridor. Sharp hourly oscillations, abrupt troughs, and staircase-like release cycles point toward intensive upstream operational influence, the signature of hydropeaking from run-of-river projects with pondage. Under natural snowmelt conditions, the Chenab in April wou...