Every time cadres of an organisation surrender -be it orchestrated, coerced or voluntary- it is usually the outfit too which stands to gain a lot. A surrender by particular cadres is an act of purification. The doves are purged out, and the hawks remain. Those who stick to the guns are inevitably die-hards who are committed to their cause, whatever it might be. For them, the means and the ends are all that matter.

Not so much in the case of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). Those who quit, did so for a host many reasons. Many did because they did not subscribe to the mindlessly gory means anymore. Few did for they now started realising that the ends were nothing but a fantastic dream. Still others did as they had joined the organisation since they had nothing better to do, and when the government made those noises about rehabilitation packages, they knew they would now have indeed something better to do.

It has been the "means" of the ULFA which has proven to be its political undoing. It is losing sympathisers at an embarrassing rate not so much for any other reason, but for the unethical and short-sighted means it is increasingly relying on to strive for its ends - that of a sovereign Asom.

The ULFA has reveled in taking pyrrhic, politically incorrect steps. It started with the killings of Surrendra Paul and Sergei Grischenko in the early Nineties. Then it made a hash of the Sanjoy Ghose episode. Finally, the open hobnobbing with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and declaration of solidarity with Pakistan-backed fundamentalist-terrorists in Kashmir have served the coup de grace. And all this time, plundering "taxes" by the crores.

It is hard to believe it were the leaders of this same organisation who, in the early Nineties, had refused to blow up bridges and oil installations in Assam in exchange for logistic and strategic support from the ISI. How could they do something which harmed their own people? they had argued. Not anymore. Today, they are prepared to anything and everything.

But why? What has gone wrong?

The problem started with Operation Rhino in 1991. Operation Bajrang had already been a disaster in counter-insurgency operations. But when Rhino started, things started going out of hand. For one, the leaders became scattered and almost inaccessible. They lost all physical touch with the cadres. The ULFA, leaders and rank-and-file included, did not know how to react. Till the other day, those who were used to moving around more or less in the open, then had to flee and stay put in the jungles.

Its machinery, mainly because of the concerted Army onslaught, started falling apart. The middle-rung militants started calling the shots, and quite literally at that. The cause, just or unjust, was hijacked. The top leaders themselves had little say, and precious little to do. All that rhetoric went for a toss. They still talked about the people, but cared little for them. The populist ventures of building bamboo bridges, embankments and schools had to come to a grinding halt, maybe primarily because of counter-insurgency operations. It steadily started losing physical contact with the masses. It was now a question of only saving one's own skin.

A frustrated, cornered insurgent is dangerous liability for society. He becomes an out-and-out terrorist. He does not care for tuning the means to achieve his ends. The means are ends in themselves. He does not care what he is supposed to be fighting for. He lives to kill and he kills to live. And he does not care who he kills and how many he has to kill so that he can live. That has been the tragedy of the ULFA.

All those sweet, romantic dreams of sovereignty have receded into oblivion. What now remains is only bitterness. It is this bitterness which manifests itself in periodic but maniacal acts of desperation. It repeats political blunders and does not learn from the previous ones. Why else would it abduct (and kill) Sanjoy Ghose? Only because it did not learn from the Sergei Grischenko episode. And it did not care, either.

The organisation's leaders are still hopelessly in disarray. They could have shown some political opportunism to accept the government's offer for talks and gone in for a ceasefire. If not anything, they could have managed a breather and been able to marshal their ranks. The ULFA does not have the foresight to do even that.

Extortions (call them 'taxes' or whatever) have not endeared it to the masses. In a place, where the ULFA itself says people are downright poor, how long can you keep bleeding the common people white? It could have done well to take a cue from its friends in the Manipur People's Liberation Front (MPLF) which has decided not to collect "taxes" from its own people. The MPLF had the vision to understand what the common people detest. But not the ULFA. Perhaps because it does not have its "own" people in mind anymore.

But then, it is this political bullheadedness which has been the hamartia of the ULFA. It is not politically cogent, clear or foresighted as an insurrectionist organisation. As things stand now, it seems hell-bent on going down in history as a band of thugs who toyed with the sentiments of the Axomiya people, milched them bone-dry and finally killed them because they had nothing else to do.