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Capitalizing on Burma's Autumn of Dissent
Burmese and Thai monks praying in October at a monastery in Mae Sot, Thailand, a border town where opposition leaders are organizing to remove Burma's military rulers.
(By Paula Bronstein -- Getty Images)
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"You can't overestimate the power of fear to keep things from happening," Villarosa said.
Here in Mae Sot, newly exiled monks, baby-faced army deserters and ethnic minorities rub shoulders with aging politicians who have been waiting for decades for something -- anything -- that would send the Burmese generals packing.
The September marches obviously fell short of that goal. But veterans of the opposition movement agree that the monks' protests revealed significant weaknesses in the intelligence arm of the military junta.
After the demonstrations, the military detained more than 3,000 people, holding many in makeshift detention centers. Individuals released from detention in recent weeks have described their interrogators as confused, inept and sometimes willing to accept bribes to release detainees. They often argued among themselves in front of detainees.
Diplomats and analysts have traced the breakdown of military intelligence to the abrupt dismissal in 2004 of Gen. Khin Nyunt, then prime minister and the longtime head of intelligence. His firing and arrest, on order of Senior Gen. Than Shwe, the head of state, coincided with the firing of thousands of intelligence officers.
"The intelligence operation used to be very professional, all the way down to the lower ranks," said David Tharckabaw, a leader of the Karen National Union, which represents the Karen ethnic minority. "Now it has become amateurish."
The crackdown in September differed from previous episodes of military brutality inside Burma in that it was captured in photographs and on videos that were splashed around the world within hours.
This was no accident, according to opposition leaders here in Mae Sot. "We had about 200 people inside the country trained to take pictures with digital and video cameras," said Maung Maung, of the National Council. "We also trained them to transmit using satellite phones and Internet cafes. They were on the front lines when the demonstration started."
He said the opposition had learned a lesson in 1988, when the military killed hundreds of people in Rangoon in an attack on student demonstrators. Then, few images of the attacks reached the outside world. "We were not taking any chances this time," Maung Maung said.
Since the crackdown, though, many of the individuals who captured and transmitted images have been detained, gone into hiding or fled the country. An acute need has arisen for money to replenish the larder -- with trained people and equipment, Maung Maung said.
For years, the U.S. government has taken the lead among foreign governments in providing funding for this kind of training and equipment. Those funds are likely to increase substantially in the coming year, if pending legislation moves through Congress.
"We are not talking about guns," said Maung Maung. "We want money for sat phones, for digital cameras, for typewriters for the monks, for bicycles. We need it now."
