Arabinda Rajkhowa, chairman of the United Liberation Front of Assam, did not ?surrender? last week. It has now come to light that he was trapped in a planned intelligence operation handled at the highest levels in the government. But with the drama over the ?surrender?, the three-decade-old outfit is back in the headlines.

Though the Ulfa was born in April 1979, it was only around 1988 that the group shot into prominence, especially after it started targeting Assam?s by-then 150-year-old tea industry. In June 1990, it summoned several top planters, including those of Tata Tea and Williamson Magor, and announced rates for a ?tax??about 50 paise per kg of tea?apart from fixing specific sums for different companies.

Earlier that year in April, the group had killed Surendra Paul, managing director of Assam Frontier Tea Co, and younger brother of NRI Swaraj Paul. Over the years, at least 20 senior planters and executives lost their lives at the hands of the Ulfa. The impact of those nightmarish days still plagues the tea industry in Assam. The industry still finds it difficult to find people willing to run the plantations.

While tea is the significant industry that suffered because of the outfit?s activities, the militancy unleashed by the Ulfa has also caused a huge flight of capital. Siliguri in North Bengal has today emerged as a business hub at the expense of Assam. Most Assam-based traders have either shifted base to Siliguri or set up parallel establishments there because of the Ulfa problem.

Over 15,000 people have lost their lives in insurgency-related incidents in Assam in the past three decades. Investors have also kept away from the state except for a few like Unilever, and developmental projects have suffered because of pressure on contractors and suppliers to part with a major percentage of their bills.

Though the outfit was banned and the Army called out to tackle it as early as in November 1990, Assam has not been able to find a way out of its Ulfa problem. The then chief minister Hiteswar Saikia initially organised a meeting between several top Ulfa leaders and Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao in 1992, but he followed it up by a futile attempt to split the group, leading to the creation of several hundred Sulfa, with the ?s? standing for ?surrendered? militants, most of whom are today a headache for the state for their uncontrollable hooliganism.

By all accounts, there has been a serious lack of political will to solve the issue. Though successive governments pretended to pursue a carrot-and-stick policy, they were actually making half-hearted attempts that led nowhere. Political parties have often been accused of trying to keep the militancy alive, even falling prey to the Ulfa?s tactics in order to obtain the tacit support of the insurgents during elections. Both the Congress and the Asom Gana Parishad have had such allegations leveled against them.

The government also missed several opportunities when the Ulfa?s support base was at its lowest, as it was after the explosion in Dhemaji, in which 11 schoolchildren were killed at an Independence Day function five years ago. There was indeed a time when the Ulfa enjoyed the support of a sizeable section of the people, especially because it projected a Robin Hood image by taking up cudgels against petty social evils. Yet even as incidents of militants being caught and lynched or handed over to the police by the common people showed an increase, little was done to provide a boost to the growing public revulsion against the gory violence.

For now, the ?surrender? of Rajkhowa, always a moderate, has raised hopes of a new attempt to find a solution. But any settlement will surely remain a far cry till Paresh Barua, the commander-in-chief of the Ulfa, agrees to come on board.