ABSTRACT
Some of the seniormost leaders of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) as well as members of its central committee, who for years had been fugitives from the land of their birth, are back in Assam. Groups and individuals that at one time or another were associated with the ULFA, or in theory and in their mindsets are drawn to the idea of a Swadhin Asom, have to be brought on board if even reasonably stable peace should return to Assam. Leaving aside the ever-present issue of illegal migration into the state, about which there is an across-the board national awareness though no political consensus, the demand for the creation of separate states from the existing Assam in bound to grow. Over 30 years of its existence, nearly 20 years of which were as an outlawed organization, ULFA has developed deep and quite complicated linkages with a variety of other separatist outfits in Assam and in the region.
