BURMA:Burma's ruling military junta enjoys such an entrenched position that nothing short of a coup will unseat them, writes Bertil Lintner, in Chiang Mai, Thailand
To understand the unrest wracking Burma, consider a new town built in the lush hills northeast of Mandalay. It's near the British-built hill station of Maymyo, where Burma's old colonial masters went to escape the heat and dust of the plain. Maymyo still boasts red-brick mansions covered in ivy and pleasant gardens with roses, which flourish in the almost alpine climate of the hills.
The new town is also a kind of refuge - but for the Burmese military. Instead of the British Victorian-style mansions of the old Maymyo, you'll find gaudy, luxury villas in the new one. The town is also home to the Defence Services Academy, Burma's West Point, which trained many of the generals who ordered last week's crackdown.
When construction on the officers' town began in late 2005, the Irrawaddy, a magazine published by Burmese exiles in Thailand, reported that "no expense has been spared to allow the generals to live in what basically is a resort, complete with an artificial beach and a manmade stretch of water to lap onto it."
Thanks to a newly upgraded airport, the retreat is a quick plane ride to Burma's new capital, Naypyidaw, built in the wasteland and jungle 200 miles north of the old capital, Rangoon.
Naypyidaw means "Abode of Kings", and kings are precisely how the Burmese generals see themselves. On the capital's parade ground stand newly erected, larger-than-life statues of three famous pre-colonial warrior kings whom the junta's leader, Senior General Than Shwe, sees as his role models.
As such delusions of grandeur suggest, Burma is no ordinary military-ruled country. When the army first seized power in 1962, the country underwent a transformation entirely different from that of nearby countries such as Thailand, South Vietnam, Indonesia and Pakistan where the military was also in control.
That's because the Burmese army seized not only political but also economic power. What the generals branded "the Burmese Way to Socialism" meant that most private property was confiscated and handed over to military-run state corporations. The old mercantile elite, largely of Indian and Chinese origin, left the country - as did many of Burma's intellectuals. Before the 1962 coup, Burma had one of the highest living standards in Southeast Asia and a fairly well-educated population. Afterward, its prosperity fled along with its best and brightest.
The Burmese military became a state-within-a-state, an insular society in which army personnel, their families and dependents enjoy far more privileges than their counterparts ever had in, say, military-ruled Thailand or Indonesia. In both those countries, some degree of pluralism hung on even during the darkest years of uniformed dictatorship.
The new generals' town and their heavily fortified new capital are only the most extreme examples of how isolated Burma's military men are from the population. The officers live in secluded, subsidised housing, and their families have access to special schools, hospitals and shops stocked with goods unavailable in ordinary stores.
The Burmese Way to Socialism was abolished after the massive pro-democracy uprising in 1988, following years of misrule. At least 3,000 people were gunned down by an army bent not on seizing power but on shoring up a bankrupt regime overwhelmed by popular protest.
After the bloodshed, perhaps to appease the international community, and perhaps because the military saw that there was money to be made, the junta permitted private enterprise and foreign investment. But in essence, there's not much difference between the Burmese Way to Socialism and the Burmese Way to Capitalism: the military is still involved in every aspect of the economy.
The rise of military power in Burma began soon after the country won its independence from Britain on January 4th, 1948. Burma's army was only 15,000-strong then. By the time of the 1988 uprising, that number had risen to nearly 200,000. And today it is estimated at 400,000.
This expansion comes at a time when the junta has managed to strike ceasefire agreements with most of the country's rebel groups, which, over the past decade, has meant only scant fighting in Burma's traditionally volatile frontier areas. The enemy now is the Burmese population at large. And the military is far better equipped now than at any time in Burma's modern history, mainly due to its massive procurement of arms from China.
Chinese fighter planes and frigates may be of little use in quelling the current urban uprisings, but the modernisation of Burma's armed forces since 1988 was also intended to ensure the loyalty of the military, without which the present regime cannot survive.
For all the monks' gallantry, nothing will change in Burma so long as the military remains united, and so far, no credible reports have emerged of splits in the ranks. The Burmese military, with its privileges and its history of atrocity, has everything to lose from more openness and transparency and nothing to gain. Foreign-based opposition groups like to talk about "dialogue" and "national reconciliation" but these buzzwords have little relevance inside Burma, where the military talks to no one but itself.
As one Rangoon-based Western diplomat once told me, "they fear that if they don't hang together, they'll hang separately".
In the Philippines, "people-power" uprisings have driven two presidents from power: Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001. But given the Burmese military's extraordinary powers and unique position astride the state, anything similar to the Philippine uprisings seems impossible in Burma.
Burma's only hope is the younger generation of army officers, which might come to understand the need to negotiate with the pro-democracy movement. But for now, no one has been able to identify any "young Turks" lurking in the wings.
Bertil Lintner, a former correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, is the author of Outrage: Burma's Struggle for Democracy. lintner@asiapacificms.com