When Hizbul Mujahideen, the biggest indigenous Kashmiri militant group, declared a ceasefire in August 2000 and sat down for talks with New Delhi, Lashkar did not agree and continued its activities unhindered. So by the time the Hizb-Centre talks failed and the ceasefire was withdrawn within a fortnight, the Lashkar had already occupied the centre-stage of Kashmir's militant movement. The Lashkar carried out 45 suicide attacks across J&K in 2000.

By now, the entire focus of Kashmir’s counter-insurgency grid was on the Lashkar but its suicide attacks were manifesting a different dynamics. On March 26, 2001, Lashkar militants struck at a CRPF camp in Srinagar’s high security Wazir Bagh neighbourhood. While the encounter was going on, a group of local youths shouted pro-Lashkar slogans a few hundred yards away. Encouraged by this demonstration, Lashkar started drawing its militants from Kashmir. At one point, when police broke a Srinagar module of Lashkar and nabbed its spokesman, he was found to be a research scholar at Kashmir University. By 2003, the Lashkar had established its command-and-control centre in the Bandipore jungles, where its new leader Bilal alias Salahudin was hiding.

By 2004, Lashkar had set up a new front called the Al Mansuriyan to conduct attacks. And when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was addressing a rally in Srinagar on November, 17, 2004, two Lashkar men appeared on a nearby hillock and started firing. The police encircled the militants and later killed them but the attack was a big embarrassment for the security forces. On January, 7, 2005, Lashkar conducted a major suicide attack at the Income Tax office in Srinagar. They returned eight days later and wreaked havoc when they sneaked into the Regional Passport office. On November 11, 2005, the police arrested a militant during an encounter at Srinagar’s Lal Chowk. Fear of death had gripped Ajaz Ahmad Bhat, a 20-year-old orphan from Mansoorabad, Faisalbad, freezing his body—unusual for a fidayeen. He survived to tell his story.

... contd.