A new terrorist outfit launched in February 2000, the Jaish-e-Mohammad has garnered publicity rather quickly because Maulana Masood Azhar founded it. Maulana Masood, a high profile terrorist, was released in December 1999 from an Indian prison. Another reason for this outfit's fame is that it claimed credit for the April 19, 2000-suicide attack in Badami Bagh, Srinagar

Maulana Masood Azhar of Karachi, a firebrand Islamist, was fostered by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to play a major role in Jammu and Kashmir’s (J&K) insurgency. He was the general secretary of the Harkat-ul Ansar, a major terrorist outfit in the mid-nineties. Maulana Masood was arrested from Srinagar in February 1994. In the subsequent years, several attempts to secure his release had failed. And finally, his release was secured in December 1999 by a group of hijackers, who demanded, and secured, his release, besides that of two other terrorists, to set free passengers of an Indian Airlines plane they had hijacked to Khandahar, Afghanistan. Immediately, he returned to Pakistan amidst widespread expectations of resuming a dominant leadership role in the secessionist movement in Kashmir.

Several factors worked against the fulfillment of these expectations. For one, the Harkat-ul Ansar was a spent force because most of its prominent cadres, including Sajjad Afghani and Nasarullah Langaryal, were killed by Indian security forces. Afghani was, in fact, killed while attempting to escape from a jail in Jammu and Kashmir. Langryal was shot dead in an encounter. The second factor is the presence of Maulana Masood in Pakistan and his speeches made there after his release, exhorting jihad in Jammu and Kashmir. These turned out to be an embarrassment to the Pakistani State due to his association with the hijack incident, and hence pointing a needle of suspicion towards Pakistan in the episode, which Pakistan stoutly denies. Therefore, official patronage for Maulana Masood’s resurrection attempt was scanty.

Maulana Masood responded by launching the Jaish-e-Mohammad with a strong, rhetorical promise that armed violence in Kashmir would be escalated. Two months after the Jaish was founded, the terrorist group launched a suicide bomb attack in Badami Bagh, Srinagar. In this incident, on April 23, 2000, a youth rammed a car laden with explosives at the gates of the local army headquarters. The attack signifies the first suicide bomb attack in J&K, in the strict sense of the term. Besides, Jaish has also claimed credit for the rifle grenade attack on the Jammu and Kashmir Secretariat building in Srinagar on June 28.