ABSTRACT
By the late 1990s, it appeared as if the Islamist insurgency against the Indian state in Kashmir might be waning. New Delhi had proved itself to be increasingly adept at putting down the more extremist jihadi elements while simultaneously co-opting more moderate Kashmiri Muslims back into the political fold.11 Newspaper accounts in 1998 suggested that some semblance of normalcy was returning to the Vale of Kashmir. The tourist industry had revitalized after collapsing in the early 1990s. Indian officials estimated that roughly 2,500 separatist militants continued their guerrilla war in Indian-administered Kashmir-down from some 5,000 to 10,000 a few years earlier. The Indian Army commander in the Valley, Lieutenant-General Krishan Pal, estimated that probably fewer than 1,000 of these insurgents were “active gun-toting militants.”12 Representative were the impressions of one Western reporter, who wrote in the summer of 1998 that “Srinagar is a town risen from the dead.”13
