The Indus River has the potential to provide hydroelectric power to millions - who will hold power over that power is what's causing a logjam. Photo: Michael Foley (flickr)

India and Pakistan have both vowed to build hydroelectric dams along an upper branch of the Indus river, only 70 kilometers apart from each other. Two new hydroelectric power sources would seem like good news for these energy-hungry economies, but there's a catch. According to the terms of the 1960 Indus Water Treaty between the two countries, there's only space for one hydroelectric plant in this part of the long-disputed Jammu and Kashmir valley —
and that's the plant that's completed first.

As the race heats up — India has forecast completion for 2016, and Pakistan one year later — Pakistan hopes to edge past India's projected finish line by hiring on Chinese companies to speed up progress.

So what else is at stake in this standoff? Experts, on the condition of anonymity, recently told The Rising Kashmir Daily Newspaper that Pakistan is reaching out to China to give them an edge over India and compensate for their geographical disadvantage, saying,

Pakistan, being the lower riparian state, faces geographical disadvantage. It fears that India's Kishenganga project will have a devastating effect on its hydro-power plans, besides adversely affecting 1,33,209 hectares of agricultural land in Pakistan administered Kashmir. To stem these fears it has signed up with Chinese companies to complete the project and secure priority rights for the river.

A recent Ground Report article regarding SAAMA News correspondent Ibrahim Malick’s report that at least 20 different UN bodies concur that India and Pakistan are the two likeliest combatants for any near-future water war further illuminates what's at stake in the ongoing Indo-Pak water disputes. Ground Report is quick to point out that these two countries are both nuclear-armed, making the situation, and the potential global consequences, all the more serious.

Telltale precursors to this potential water war are already abundant on both sides of the border, including the unambiguous recommendation by the Pakistani Urdu press for war as a solution to the problem. India, in a more circuitous approach, is enforcing "punishment through water"on Pakistan for their lack of action regarding the recent terrorism attacks in India. Clearly, the prospect for a quick, effective resolution is grim.

As Indus water commissioners from India and Pakistan continue to meet in hopes of resolving issues relating to water resources and hydroelectric power generation in the region, the true losers in the South Asian water wars may end up being the forgotten residents of the very valleys the Indus River and its tributaries flow through.

According to The Bombay News,"electricity remains a distant dream for the residents of the Gurez valley of Jammu and Kashmir despite ample water resources existing in the region." Even though the Kishenganga hydroelectric plant is being built in the Gurez valley, the power from the plant will be transmitted to other, more populous and politically influential Indian states such as Himchal Pradesh, Punjab, and Uttar Pradesh.

Shazia Tabasum, a student and Gurez valley resident, told The Bombay News, "[t]here is so much water here. The government has to take steps to put an end to the power crisis. The electricity is supplied through diesel generators. As long as diesel is there we get electricity, but if the diesel goes out of stock, we live in dark and have to wait for fifteen days to one month for the next stock to reach our place."

Unless the Indian government responds to pleas like these from local residents, they'll have to continue getting by with two to three hours of diesel-generated electricity a day. And by the looks of it, the government has its hands full making the power available in the first place.

Kyrgyzstan's Toktogul Reservoir is the country's largest source of hydroelectric power. Photo: Andrei Shevelov.com (flickr)

After months of forced power blackouts, Kyrgyzstan’s residents are bracing for the cold winter months ahead — and are turning the heat on their government to stop the cutoffs.

With its high-peaked mountain landscape, the former Soviet republic relies on glacial melt to generate hydroelectric power, its main energy source.

Kyrgyz officials have rationed electricity since April, blaming the region's semi-drought and an an unseasonably cold spring that did not melt enough mountaintop snow to refill the reservoirs. The latest UN appeal for humanitarian aid in Kyrgyzstan backs this claim.

Some residents hesitate to blame Mother Nature for the crisis, pointing instead to poor government management.

"We don't live like this, this is Bishkek," a young woman in the cosmopolitan capital told Eurasia.net during a period of blackouts. "We believe this is caused by corruption."

The World Bank's Raghuveer Sharma calls the situation a result "not only of a period of water shortage, but also of poor management of the sector, or rather of the water resources that Kyrgyz energy depends on."

The Kyrgyz government is responding to the criticism, making sure power was restored in Bishkek and firing the country's energy minister in late November. But blackouts are continuing in rural areas — sometimes up to eight or ten hours per day. And the energy sector of the government says it will continue to ration electricity through the peak winter heating season.

While the cold may not be as bad this year as last year, electricity stoppages will create much more suffering, especially in urban or semi-urban areas where residents have less access to natural fuel sources, says Kevin Grubb, former Kyrgyzstan deputy country director for Mercy Corps. Grubb, who lived in Kyrgyzstan in 2006 and 2007, says, "More people among the vulnerable populations will die from exposure — as we saw to some degree last year — especially among the elderly and poor, and newborns and infants."

Even before the coldest months arrive, local businesses say they've already been crippled by the outages. "All manufacturing depends on electricity, so everyone has suffered," political analyst Syrgak Abdyldaev told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "The rolling power cuts are increasing the level of discontent among all social strata, and there are more and more unhappy people."