Indian security forces are under siege for the first time in winter in their decade-old civil war against Muslim militants in Kashmir.
Security officials in the state's summer capital, Srinagar, said winter was normally the time when they had the upper hand in "hunting down" terrorists who had been unable to return to their bases in neighbouring Pakistan across snow-bound mountains. "This year is just the opposite," one official said. "We are the ones on the defensive now."
Over 150,000 military and paramilitary personnel are deployed on counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir in addition to around 50,000 local police.
Pakistan, which occupies a third of Kashmir and lays claim to the rest, denies Indian claims that it is sponsoring the "proxy war" in the state, saying it offers only moral and diplomatic support.
Intelligence officials said between 1,500 and 2,500 motivated, well-trained and armed militants had changed tactics by executing "quality hits" on the security forces, successfully tying them down and forcing them into a laager or defensive posture.
Attacks on the Srinagar headquarters of the army's XV corps and the nearby offices of the police's Special Operations Group over the past eight weeks, in which 19 security personnel were killed, indicated the militants' revised strategy of carrying the war directly to the security forces.
"Their strategy is to keep the army along the LoC [the line of control that divides the disputed state] under constant threat and in a state of forward deployment all the time," a senior military officer said. And they were succeeding, he stated.
Senior security officials claimed any concerted strategy in dealing with Kashmir's separatist movement had been "hijacked" by several federal agencies and departments, locked in an endless "turf battle" for supremacy. "Just when Kashmir desperately needs a pro-active policy, the federal government is responding apathetically", one officer said. He was fighting the politicians, the system, other security organisations and lastly the militants.
Militant morale, meanwhile, received a boost last month after the government released three militants in exchange for around 155 passengers aboard a hijacked Indian Airlines plane.
Two of the three militants have surfaced in Pakistan, which India claims master-minded the hijacking. Pakistan denies India's assertions. "Releasing the militants was the biggest blunder the government could have made," an army general said. It was difficult to motivate soldiers to fight militancy when they realised that all their efforts might come to naught one day, he added.
Local militants and their sympathisers in Srinagar are also apprehensive about the outcome of Kashmir's insurgency, which they said had been taken over by Pakistan-backed mercenaries. "We are living on the edge of a sword," said Moiuddin Lone, a former militant and brother of Mushtaq Ahmed Lone, the state's interior minister.
The former head of the disbanded Muslim Mujahideen group, who was released from jail five years ago, said militancy in the state would not end as Pakistan would never give up its low-cost operation in Kashmir.
"Fighting Pakistan's `proxy war' is going to be a long haul", a senior army officer said. He said India needed to inflict heavy casualties on Pakistan so that it became untenable for it to continue sponsoring Kashmiri separatism. Analysts said India had failed to realise that Pakistan was confident of raising the stakes in Kashmir, safe in the knowledge that Delhi would remain committed to preventing any military crisis from escalating into a full blown conventional conflict in which Islamabad would find itself at a disadvantage.
After India's multiple nuclear tests last year, the Home Minister, Mr L.K. Advani, declared that possessing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) had brought about a qualitative change in its relations with Pakistan, especially in finding a solution to the Kashmir issue. Mr Advani declared that though India adhered to the no-first use of nuclear weapons, it would "deal firmly" with Pakistan's hostile activities. Other Hindu nationalist leaders challenged Pakistan to battle at a place and time of its choosing. But this virility vanished after Pakistan's nuclear tests.