Hassan Aslam Shad

Personal Account | Harvard Law School | International Law | First Pakistani at International Criminal Court, The Hague | Author | Media | RTs not endorsement

[Hassan Aslam Shad @HassShad]

In my latest op-ed for DAWN, I argue that the American security umbrella in the Middle East has not just cracked but effectively been eviscerated. I explore how the Riyadh quadrilateral meeting between #Pakistan, #Turkiye, #Egypt, and #SaudiArabia could mark the birth of a "Green Nato" designed to retire era of external dependency. As the Western hardware & security proves porous, this nascent security architecture could signal coming of age for an indomitable and localized axis of stability. @dawn_com

https://t.co/IioVJwfmen

[Michael Kram 🇨🇦 @MichaelKramSK]

Free Imran Khan! Imran Khan has been left to languish in a Pakistani prison cell for over three years. Today in the House of Commons I presented a petition calling for his release, as well as the release of all political prisoners in Pakistan.

[Trita Parsi @tparsi]

Trump needs a deal!

This war has been a disaster for his standing, including with young republicans.

Though he was +9pt over Kamala in 2024, he is now facing a foreign policy net approval of -40pt

And with young GOP on foreign policy, he is -14pt on the Iran War!

[Azhar Khan Aasifzai @AasifzaiAzhar]

عاصم منیر نے کہا ہے کہ جہموریت پر شب خون اس لئے مارنا پڑتا ہے کہ کچھ لوگ ملک کا سودا کر دیں گے
حامد میر سے سنیں کہ باجوہ نے کشمیر کا سودا کیسے کیا
بارڈر پر سیز فائر کے عوض کیا سودے بازی کی
باجوہ کی غداری کو عمران خان بھانپ چکے تھے اور وہ رستے میں دیوار تھے

[Cenk Uygur @cenkuygur]

American media has been telling us for decades that Muslims are terrorists and savages. You know what's the most savage thing you could do? Kill someone and take their home and property. That's what Israel has been doing our whole lives. So, why has US media inverted the truth?

[brief. @brief_pk]

Against the backdrop of the budget and critical progress on an MoU between Iran and the U.S., we have confirmed reports as of four hours ago that the protests in Azad Jammu & Kashmir are still ongoing. The federal government, under the guidance of the military, has rejected any and all deliberations regarding the 12 seats. The state has decided to impose its will through force; so far, 15 people have died in the clashes.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

She is lying. Brazenly. Israel has forced over a million people (a million!) from their homes, razed entire neighborhoods to the ground, told Christian villagers to not let Shia villagers stay in their villages, and killed multiple first-responders in double tap strikes.

[Hassan Aslam Shad @HassShad]

My latest for Dawn:

https://t.co/WEDd9LJbkn

[Imtiaz Gul @ImtiazGul60]

Declaring Others Traitors, India, Bangladesh, China building up water and power infrastructure: What is Pakistan doing? Declaring Kashmiris anti state, and debating/delaying hydropower projects?
https://t.co/hZQvKhk7Ej

[Imtiaz Gul @ImtiazGul60]

غداری ، ملک دشمنی- یہی القابات ولی خان ، شیخ مجیب ، بنگالیوں ، بلوچوں کو دیئے گئے ؟
اب کشمیری بھی اس کلب میں شامل- کیا مسائل حل ہو جائیں گے ؟
Declaring Others Traitors, Anti-State Is No Substitute for Failures:
https://t.co/hZQvKhk7Ej

[Ayesha Siddiqa @iamthedrifter]

"The years from 2018 to 2022 were also the last phase of hybrid-politics in Pakistan: Mr. Khan’s government was the last that enjoyed a close to equal status with
the military in decision-making...The country’s parliamentary or constitutional democracy has now effectively turned into constitutional militarism in
which Parliament has turned willingly into a junior partner to the armed forces ready
to bring about legal changes that can only further strengthen the GHQ’s control of the
state without declaring a martial law." https://t.co/cbLrfX5M0Y

[Syed Ali Zia Jaffery @syedalizia1992]

Strengthening sea-based deterrence is an important part of nuclear strategy. @Rabs_AA ,in @mindovermic11 ,explains this and some challenges and opportunities associated with it. https://t.co/KZ7rmqMH56

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is an absolutely major story and almost no Western media covered it: India's water minister CR Patil said on Tuesday that "it is certain, not a single drop of water will go (to Pakistan) in the coming years."

Patil said that India is "actively working on it" after "directives" from Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

As a reminder, Pakistan's dependence on water from India is close to total: the country is essentially built around the Indus river system, all of whose rivers flow through India before entering Pakistan.

The Indus system irrigates 80% of Pakistan's farmland, generates a third of its electricity, supplies its major cities with drinking water, and sustains the livelihoods of some 240 million people.

So, essentially, no water from India = annihilation of Pakistan as a state.

Pretty damn consequential, all the more given we're talking about 2 nuclear powers here. And all the more because, understandably, Pakistan's formal position is that water diversion would constitute "an act of war" (https://t.co/WLoDpGzc2W).

Unfortunately, Patil's statement isn't just talk: India already set up the legal framework to make this possible. Last year, they unilaterally suspended the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, despite the treaty containing no withdrawal clause.

It used to be the one piece of India-Pakistan relations that worked, and had survived multiple wars and over six decades of hostility. Now India is saying officially that it will "never be restored" (https://t.co/2SnUNevFbX).

The one mitigating factor here is physics: you don't just "turn off" a major Himalayan river system. Diverting rivers of this magnitude means building massive storage and canal infrastructure in Himalayan terrain: projects measured in years.

But India IS ACTUALLY BUILDING that infrastructure: for instance it just approved in May the building of the so-called "Chenab–Beas Link Tunnel," an 8.7km ₹2,352 crore (~$280M) tunnel designed to divert water from the Chenab basin into India's Beas river system. The Chenab is one of the main tributaries of the Indus - and one of the three "western rivers" (Indus, Jhelum, Chenab) allocated to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Water Treaty.

Which means that, unfortunately, Patil's "not a single drop of water in the coming years" looks like a roadmap: the infrastructure to strangle Pakistan's water supply is being approved and tendered in plain sight.

This is also a story about selective media coverage and double standards: I'm willing to bet that 99% of people in the West have never heard of any of this.

Now make this thought experiment: imagine China announced it was building infrastructure to cut off every drop of water flowing to India and its ministers proclaimed on television that "not a single drop" would cross the border. It would be wall-to-wall coverage, sanctions packages, and a thousand op-eds about Beijing "weaponizing water."

Heck we don't need to imagine because the simple fact of China merely building a hydropower dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo (the upstream Brahmaputra) generated exactly the wall-to-wall alarm I'm describing, even though China threatened nothing and even though Indian officials said the threat is a "myth" given the fact that the river gathers most of its volume inside India from monsoon rains (https://t.co/GBgBybBPoE). Malign intent was still presumed from the act of construction, because it's China.

In India's case, the intent couldn't possibly be clearer: it's proclaimed by ministers on the record, and backed by India's actions. But because they're a courted Western partner, what they're doing - arguably the most extreme form of economic warfare imaginable, directed at a nuclear state - largely gets silence.

Src for screenshot: https://t.co/qav4muNkij

[Middle East Monitor @MiddleEastMnt]

There is a peculiar genius among certain Muslim intellectuals in the West: they can detect Islamophobia everywhere except where naming it might cost them something. In Paris, they are forensic. In Delhi, incandescent. In Gaza, thunderous. In Washington, fluent in the grammar of empire. But when Muslim political agency is crushed in Pakistan, when Imran Khan is imprisoned and millions of his supporters are treated as civic contamination, the vocabulary collapses. The seminar goes quiet.

#Opinion by Junaid S. Ahmad

Read: https://t.co/e0m3HHttDQ

[Council on Foreign Relations @CFR_org]

"After more than 12 years in office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces a painful reality check: His promise to modernize India’s economy hasn’t panned out. Instead, the country faces a rapidly weakening rupee, dwindling net foreign investment, and worries that artificial intelligence will take a wrecking ball to the information technology industry," writes CFR expert @dhume for @WSJ.
https://t.co/7mKTxLIfy0

[Ali K.Chishti Official @thewirepak]

Israel’s emerging nexus with India, Armenia, Somaliland & Cyprus is clearly pitched against Türkiye encircling Turkiye in the Mediterranean, Caucasus & Horn of Africa. Netanyahu’s claim of a new 'Middle Eastern ally' is pure fantasy, not reality. Türkiye stands strong with its partners (Pakistan, KSA, Qatar & Egypt etc) defending sovereignty & regional balance. No encirclement will succeed.

[Shashank Mattoo @MattooShashank]

Breaking: Pakistan is desperately trying to cover up its human rights abuses in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, says India

[Prof. Dr. Zafar Nawaz Jaspal @zafar_jaspal]

The consolidation of military ties between the de-facto Taliban government and Russia further emboldens the former, and they continue their militant attitude towards the neighboring states. https://t.co/ndYgMPh8Pl

[South Asian Voices @SAVoices]

Read the Urdu translation of @Haleema_Saadia's analysis of Indian and Pakistani narratives of restraint and victory in the May 2025 crisis, now available on @SAVoices. https://t.co/kMogVdWENP

[Bahrain News Agency @bna_en]

National Guard Commander meets Air Staff Chief of Pakistan Air Force

https://t.co/SgLTPjsVHU

[Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, PR of Pakistan to the UN @PakistanPR_UN]

To us, it is absolutely clear — India's key aims and objectives in Afghanistan under the disguise of development or humanitarian assistance, are solely driven by the singular goal of destabilizing Pakistan, including by using terrorist groups operating from Afghan soil such as the TTP and the BLA, which act as a proxy of India to perpetrate terrorism inside Pakistan.

- My further statement (RoR) in the UN Security Council in response to some of the baseless and unwarranted remarks made by Indian representative