When the outfit published two issues of its weekly newsletter, Freedom, hailing the Kashmiri ``freedom fighters'', thereby supporting Pakistan in the Kargil conflict, there was a wave of condemnation in the Assamese press and among the people.

``Whatever little sympathy the ULFA had among some sections of the Assamese was greatly reduced when it supported Pakistan,'' says Assam Sahitya Sabha president Chandra Prasad Saikia. ``It's true the ULFA's influence, particularly among the middle classes, is fast eroding,'' agrees veteran sociologist Amalendu Guha. To a cross-section of the people, the militants have come to be identified with extortionists, while its ideological claims are increasingly questioned.

This time, the group's links with Pakistan and the Inter Services Intelligence were exposed as never before. ``When we said it, the people wouldn'tbelieve us; but after the articles in Freedom, nobody was in doubt,'' Brigadier Gaganjit Singh of the Tactical Headquarters says.The ULFA's Pakistani and ISI links had troubled the outfit for many years.

As the surrendered ULFA (SULFA, as they are called) leader J K Mahanta recalls, the question divided the ULFA leaders soon after their first visit to Pakistan in 1991. ``Pakistanis offered to arm and finance us, but they wanted us to carry out blasts in Dhuliajan and other oil refineries and spread fake currencies in the North-East,'' he says.

Sunil Nath, the then publicity secretary who accompanied Paresh Barua and other leaders to Pakistan, refused to toe the Pakistani line and surrendered in 1992. That may not have been the only reason, but Mahanta says he too left the ULFA on the issue of the Pakistani connection.

The ULFA too seemed to have realised its mistake in taking sides with Pakistan on the Kargil conflict. It issued a subsequent statement praising the Kargil martyrs from the State, butthis was seen by the Assamese as a desperate attempt to win back public sympathy.

The ULFA has steadily been losing popular support. Only last April, it disappointed large sections of the people by rejecting the first-ever offer from the Army for a cease-fire during the Assamese festival Bihu. ``It was a genuine gesture from us, like the earlier cease-fires in Nagaland during Christmas. It would have given the people a taste of peace, like they have in Nagaland now,'' Brigadier Singh explains.

Small wonder then, that the people rejected the ULFA's diktat when the Army went for a recruitment drive here last September. About 10,000 people turned up for just 350 vacancies. This year alone, there have been a series of incidents at Thamma, Barpeta Road, Kaki in Nagaon and Biswanath Charali in Sonitpur, which showed people rising in defiance of ULFA intimidations.

In the Kaki incident, a huge crowd of about 8,000 people joined the funeral of a local Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader who had beenkilled allegedly by ULFA militants.

Explaining the rising tide against the ULFA, Guha says the ULFA had exploited Assam's grievances against New Delhi, but the Assamese were never ``out of the Indian political system like the Nagas who have been fighting for independence since 1946.'' But he adds that the ULFA continued to attract the poor from villages who had no stake in the system. Even if it were to be alienated from the majority, it could carry on as a small band of terrorists. ``But that's only a death wish,'' says Saikia.