In April 2005, the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen's (HM's) Beerwah-area 'districtcommander' Yusuf Sheikh had mailed a letter to police officials in Srinagar. Itcontained a photograph of the severed head of Farooq Ahmad, an agent infiltratedinto the organisation six months earlier; the head itself was tossed in the dirtnear a city bus station soon after. In Sheikh's own case, the defiant gestureproved misguided - he was targeted for attention and shot dead inside of sixweeks - but the action did reflect the rise of a certain arrogant élan in theHM: a sign that it had begun to recover from the decimation of its senior fieldcommand in 2003-2004.