Fear Of Mission Out strikes ULFA (Independent) youth Premium

Outfit uses social media to recruit cadres but does not allow use of mobile phones once they join the organisation

Rituraj Moran was 18 when he joined the sangathan (organisation), a euphemism for the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent), wooed by Facebook posts. Five years later, he quit the extremist group, partly disgruntled by the lack of access to the same social media platform.

Some sub-nationalist Assamese poems and similar content posted on Facebook had convinced Mr. Moran that Assam’s future lay in an armed revolution against the “Indian colonialists” represented by the armed forces. A bit of networking drew him to a spotter of the extremist group, assigned to recruit fresh faces from villages near the coal town of Margherita in Assam’s Tinsukia district bordering Arunachal Pradesh.

He soon became a member of the 82nd batch of ULFA(I) trainees in Myanmar. Life in the Arakan or 779 camp was much harder than he had imagined. But what rankled for a few in the 82nd batch was their inability to stay connected with friends; a ban on using mobile phones in the jungle hideout meant a divorce from the very social media platforms that had attracted them to the ULFA(I) in the first place.

A few months ago, Mr. Moran, now aged 23, quit the ULFA-!.

“Differences with lower-rung leaders of the outfit and their tendency to treat us as slaves were the primary reasons why I quit. Our inability to be in touch with the world beyond was also a factor,” another surrendered extremist from a village near the oil town of Digboi said, declining to be quoted for fear of being targeted by the outfit.

ULFA was formed in April 1979 as an offshoot of the Assam Agitation that sought to free the State from foreigners. The outfit split into the larger pro-talks group and the Paresh Baruah-headed anti-talks faction which renamed itself the ULFA(I) in 2013.

In February, the ULFA(I) issued a statement trashing “theories” that it undertakes recruitment drives through social media platforms. It blamed the Assam police and the Army for creating fake Facebook accounts in the name of the outfit to lure job-seeking youth who are later shown to be arrested for “vested interests”.