For monks in Myanmar, an uphill battle

Better trained in riot control
"Will the soldiers shoot at the Buddha? Or will the generals try something else this time? A 'straightforward massacre' as in 1988 may not be possible this time," said Bertil Lintner, a Myanmar expert and author of a book on that uprising two decades ago.

The military does have a new card to play: Its policemen and soldiers have been better trained in riot control and the use of non-lethal force, Myanmar journalists say.

The protests, meanwhile, have failed to produce a visible leader for anti-junta forces to rally around. Iconic democracy activist and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest while others are jailed or have fled abroad. The only opposition party — Suu Kyi's decimated National League for Democracy — has shown no initiative over the past month.

Although monks have been spearheading the demonstrations and filling most of the ranks in protest marches, they aren't likely to emerge in a leadership role, Lintner said.

"They can mobilize the people, get them to rise up, but as monks they cannot provide political leadership," he said. "It's in a sense leaderless and rudderless. No one can bring (the protests) forward, to come up with specific demands. The monks can take the moral high ground, but not more than that."

Some experts think that once the unrest is quelled, the regime may be willing to take some conciliatory steps, depending on the intensity of pressure from China, the United Nations and others in the world community as well as from within.

Many steps in 'road map to democracy'
These could include speeding up work on drafting a constitution, already a decade old, and holding a referendum and election along a so-called "road map to democracy." The regime also could open talks with Suu Kyi and her party.

But there are no signs the generals, ensconced and safe in the remote new bunker-like capital of Naypyitaw, intend to relinquish any of the real power they have held since the last civilian government was toppled in 1962.

Questions have been being raised about whether soldiers — who are virtually all from the Buddhist ethnic Burman majority — would defy the taboo on mistreating monks and other countrymen. Most Burmese males spend at least a token few weeks as monks as a show of devotion.

However, there are no signs of cracks among the military's rank and file. Soldiers have shown no sympathy for protesters, and none has changed sides as happened in 1988 when some air force personnel joined demonstrations. Troops are kept isolated in barracks; their families get free housing and medical care.

"Judging from the nature and habit of the Myanmar military, they will not allow the monks or activists to topple them," said Chaiyachoke Julsiriwong, a Myanmar scholar at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.

"They will fight at all costs because these people have grown to believe they are only institution that can uphold the nation's security. They think of themselves as the center of the nation."

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