Is there anyone left to challenge the junta in Myanmar?

Over the past two decades the ruling generals have combed through their society, crushing, dismantling or isolating pockets of organized dissent. The main targets have been students, government workers, monks and political parties, all major players in the uprising of 1988 that nearly succeeded in restoring democracy to the impoverished country formerly known as Burma.

Today, said Toshihiro Kudo, an expert on Myanmar at the Institute of Developing Economies, a research organization in Tokyo: “The military realizes they are standing on magma. The people are angry.”

“At the same time the demonstrators cannot win without weapons or without a strategy, without organization,” Mr. Kudo added.

STUDENTS University students played a crucial role in opposing British colonial rule and led the first protests of the 1988 uprising. But since 1990, the urban campuses of the country’s top educational institutions have been largely vacated and students sent to satellite towns several hours by bus from central Yangon, as Rangoon is now known. The junta shortened the time it took to earn a bachelor’s degree to three years from four and encouraged distance learning – keeping students at home.

“Students have always been at the forefront of any revolution,” said Aung Din, the former vice chairman of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, now defunct but an active participant in the 1988 protests. “The military has shut down educational life.”

POLITICAL GROUPS In the elections held in 1990, the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won 392 out of the 485 seats contested. The military-backed party, the National Union Party, won 10 seats with smaller parties taking the rest.

The military ignored the election results and cracked down repeatedly on the National League for Democracy, banning gatherings, imprisoning its leaders and keeping Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. “The legitimate parties from 1990 were just about eliminated,” said Sean Turnell, an expert on Myanmar at Macquarie University in Sydney.

CIVIL SERVANTS Government employees were key supporters of the 1988 uprising. Employees at state-owned banks refused to allow government agencies to withdraw money, and workers in the department that managed state-run gas stations refused to supply fuel to army vehicles.

“Government workers came into the streets with the crowds,” Mr. Aung Din said. “The government was shut down.”

In 2005, in what appeared to be an effort to isolate the government workers, the junta relocated senior civil servants to Naypyidaw, the new administrative capital carved out from the jungles more than 186 miles north of Yangon. Last year, government employees were given raises to compensate for the move.

“This time, I don’t think government staff are willing or able to participate in the protests,” Mr. Aung Din said.

CITIZENS In 1993, the generals formed the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a social welfare and self-described patriotic organization that also serves as a militia and a spy network for the junta. As of September 2005 it had 22.8 million members – more than half the population, according to The New Light of Myanmar, a state-run newspaper.

“In every walk of life there are informers,” said Bo Hla Tint, who was elected a member of Parliament in 1990 but who fled to the United States after the generals ignored the results of the election. “You cannot talk loudly in your own home. They have infiltrated the people.”

Many experts say they believe that the Union Solidarity and Development Association would serve as the military’s political party if some form of democracy was restored.

MONKS The junta has lavished cash on Buddhist abbots and financed the construction or renovation of pagodas throughout the country. But as the events of recent weeks show, they appear to have miscalculated that this patronage would keep the entirety of the Buddhist clergy content.

“All the generals make great displays of their own piety – many of the pagodas are in better shape than they have been in decades,” said Mr. Turnell of Macquarie University. “This is why many people were surprised to see the monks take to the streets.”

The military has detained hundreds of monks and is in the process of interrogating them to weed out the leaders of the protests. But the recent crackdown on monks has deeply angered Buddhists in Myanmar and is likely to be the source of months, if not years, of simmering discontent.