As one might expect of a place racked by 13 years of conflict, the road from the airport into this summer capital is lined with troops.
But it is also lined with mansions, many of them brand new, that would not look out of place in Westchester County.
Their presence instantly raises a few questions about the struggle here between guerrillas and Indian troops -- as well as comparisons with Sri Lanka and other trouble spots.
''You expect a Jaffna; you expect a Palestine; you expect a Lebanon,'' Parvez Dewan, the divisional commissioner of Kashmir, said of Srinagar. ''You find a boom town.''
Residents of the Kashmir Valley, which is only one part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir but is the locus of the secession movement, have suffered dearly since 1989, when the Pakistan-backed insurgency against Indian rule began.
At least 35,000 Kashmiris have lost their lives, by the government's estimate, and the real toll may be double that.
It does not diminish that suffering to point out that while pools of blood have been spilled, piles of money have been made. In some cases that is despite the conflict. In other cases it is because of it.
As a new government prepares to take power in this state, the only one in India with a Muslim majority, deciphering Srinagar's intricate economic mosaic is important.
''There is definitely a constituency with a vested interest in the conflict continuing,'' said Amitabh Mattoo, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a Kashmiri.
Once-poor Kashmir became prosperous after joining India, so the constant chatter about money here is less about a newly rich state than a class of newly rich people.
''People who could not afford a glass of water 10 years ago are now moving in such nice cars,'' sasid Muzaffar A. Baba, a restaurant owner.
Many of the arrivistes have managed to exploit a bloated and unaccountable bureaucracy. Others are leaders of a separatist movement bankrolled by Pakistan and by Kashmiris abroad, or ex-militants who used the spoils of war to move from villages to big homes in Srinagar.
Some profited from the largesse of intelligence agencies operating in the valley. Some Kashmiris made their money the old-fashioned way -- through horticulture or handicrafts -- while others took over the jobs or businesses that the valley's Pandits, or Hindus, driven out by Muslim militants left behind.
It is possible, of course, that had militancy not come to Kashmir, its economy, which grew by about 4.5 percent a year in the 1990's, would have equaled or surpassed the 6.5 percent growth that India's economy achieved.
But the state still has one of the country's lowest poverty rates: about 4 percent of the population. Srinagar and Jammu, the summer and winter capitals, are the only cities in the country where real estate prices have continuously risen in the last decade. In part that is because many people, fearing raids by the army or extortion by militants, poured all of their cash into real estate.
There are 21,000 cars in Srinagar alone -- a fivefold increase from 1990. There were 560 private schools in the valley seven years ago; there are 1,360 now.
It is true that tourism in Kashmir, where visitors once flocked for its seductive landscapes, has vanished. On lovely but little trafficked Dal Lake, rows of forlorn houseboats wear ''to let'' signs like hopeful wallflowers.
But no one knows for sure how much of the pre-militancy economy tourism constituted -- government officials now say no more than 15 percent -- since new sources of cash quickly came in to fill the void.
One was what is known here as ''olive tourism,'' a reference to the hundreds of thousands of members of the Indian security forces stationed in the state, who may send their salaries home but spend plenty of petty cash in Srinagar.
The security forces have also rented most of the hotels in town the year round, whereas tourism was only seasonal. The military does some local purchasing, which is why all of the fabric in the S. M. Khan Tailor Shop these days is olive.
''It is survival,'' Hilal Khan, the shop's proprietor, said of his commission from the Border Security Force. ''Bread, not roast chicken.''
