Abdul Majeed Dar

Abdul Majeed Dar was a leader and the Chief of the Kashmir militant organization Hizbul Mujahideen. Because of his ceasfire Hizb is regarded as an indigenous and genuine fighting force of Kashmiris by many western capitals including Washington. He later gave up violence and sought to restore peace in Kashmir. He has been described as a "sane voice in J&K who realized the futility of the gun".

Dar originated from the town of Sopore.

A teacher by profession and after jail Dar ran a dry cleaning store in the 1970s. In this period, he was involved with Syed Ali Geelani and went to jail several times. In the late 1980s, after the rigged 1987 elections, he became a militant along with his friend Fazl-ul-Haq Qureshi. By 1990, he was the leader of the organization Tahreek-e-Jihad-e-Islami (TJI). In 1991, Dar merged this group with the Hizb, bringing in several thousand followers. In the following years, rivalries developed within the Hizb, culminating in a killing of 21 people in a PoK village near the border in 1998.

Praveen Swami, citing friends of Dar, has written that soon afterwards, he went for Hajj, and had a revelation standing in front of the Kaaba, and where saw "a vision of the suffering that a decade of terror had inflicted on Jammu and Kashmir." Eventually, after the much-maligned Chittisinghpura massacre of March 2000, several voices within the Hizb joined Dar in seeking a return to more peaceful approaches. In July 2000, Dar, along with four other Hizb commanders, declared a unilateral ceasefire in a declaration from the outskirts of Srinagar. The ceasefire was ratified by the PoK based commander Sayeed Salahudeen, but was criticized strongly in the Pakistan media. It was withdrawn by Salahudeen by September.

At the time, Dar had said, "we want to show the world that we are not hard-liners and we are flexible in the search for a solution."

Rumours were that Dar had been in touch with the Indian nodal Intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and also the Intelligence Branch (IB), and that Hizb had elected him operational commander in order to declare the ceasefire. Though the move was immediately endorsed by the Hizb leadership, it led to deep divisions between the followers of Dar and Salahuddin.

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Wikipedia