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A king can only move one square at a time. He is behind a wall of other pieces, some more powerful than he is. The bishop and the queen have more maneuverability than a king or head of state. Pawns are pawns. Only if they survive to march across the board can a player claim a new queen in exchange.

In Burma, some of the human pawns are conscripted, forced to walk in front of the army as human minesweepers. This has been well documented through refugee testimonials put together by human rights groups.

The pro-democracy struggle against the Burmese junta – the Orwellian “State Peace and Development Council” – has many chess analogies. The SPDC has brought neither peace nor development. Its old name was even more sinister – the State Law and Order Restoration Council – but more accurate. The junta is all about perpetuating its own power. “Law” is what it writes down as “laws.” The Burmese people have never had any input into these so-called laws.

Ne Win, the granddaddy of all the generals, is said to have often played chess. It’s not clear whether he played Burmese or Western chess, which may have different rules and pieces. Generally he played with his guards or subordinates. Under a military dictator, the whole country is pretty much the general’s subordinates.

Subordinates can’t play to beat the boss, however brilliant they are. If they win on the board, they might lose their lives. The power balance is stacked too steeply on one side.

In our Burmese pro-democracy movement, our leader Aung San Suu Kyi is playing the roles of both king and queen.

But sadly, because of an asymmetrical power equation in which the junta has allowed itself underhanded and back-stabbing “dirty moves” which are neither truly legal nor ethical, Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy have been hemmed in physically and metaphorically. Their options and freedom of movement have been progressively circumscribed.

Suu Kyi has spent 14 of the last 20 years under some form of arrest. Now she is in the infamous Insein Jail. Even during her brief periods of relative freedom, she was harassed in many ways, including having her railway carriage disconnected, being stranded in the countryside for days without toilet facilities or clean water, having an army officer threaten her with a gun and having her motorcade attacked by thugs in the Depayin Massacre, which took place in central Burma in 2003. Her current round of arrest started then, as did that of her deputy, U Tin Oo.

The NLD’s principal strategist, U Win Tin, was 19 years in jail, sometimes in solitary confinement in a dog cell, despite his advanced age and poor health. Recently freed, he has bravely spoken up for Suu Kyi, freedom and democracy, but he recently told a reporter that he was evicted from his home while he was in prison and now cannot rent a place, as landlords get nervous. He says he does not know how much more of this he can stand. In a recent photo he looked red-eyed and tired.

Other NLD supporters have died, some in prison. At any one time in Burma there are over 2,000 political prisoners. You can be imprisoned for making a joke.

Since the 2007 Saffron Revolution, when Buddhist monks peacefully walked the streets chanting the Loving Kindness Sutra, and the disaster of Cyclone Nargis which hit the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008, many monks and people who tried to help storm victims during the cyclone have been imprisoned, given very long jail terms and sent to prisons in distant parts of the gulag.

Over the 21 years since the 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations, we have seen the democratic opposition’s numbers depleted by death, attrition and imprisonment. Overseas, the various groups jockey for position and attack each other, except in perceived times of crisis. Then at least they have the good grace to pull together.

The junta, however, has become increasingly sophisticated as well as brutal. It has added cyber warfare and computer hacking to its skill set.

The savvy Sr. General Than Shwe is said to have been trained in psychological warfare under Ne Win, and is said to be able to speak English and use the computer, despite his taciturn look. In his latest move, Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged with harboring an uninvited guest. A middle-aged American Mormon and depressed drifter named John Yettaw is said to have swum to her house, where he was allowed to stay by Suu Kyi and her two maids for two nights, because he pleaded tiredness due to diabetes.

A well-regarded Burmese blog has an audio recording of the taxi driver who said he took Yettaw to Suu Kyi’s house, saying the guest went to the compound by way of the gatehouse – not swimming across Inya Lake, as the junta charges. Yettaw’s former wife told a reporter that he is timid and physically unable to swim that far. The Irrawaddy magazine, based in Chiangmai, Thailand, consulted with a scuba diving expert from the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, who said the items Yettaw is said to have left at Suu’s house, including two chadors and books, would have weighed him down. The homemade flippers he used would not have worked well. The PADI representative said Yettaw would have had to have been a tri-athlete to be able to pull that off.

Many people think of Than Shwe and the other generals as uneducated buffoons. In practice, they are very savvy in how they deal or don’t deal with pressure from overseas groups and the foreign media. They know very well that if they make a few token “concessions” and lie low, the perpetually distracted media will move on quickly to other issues.

See how news of the Iranian dissidents, dying for their freedom on the streets, has been overshadowed by the media blitz over Michael Jackson’s death.

In 2008, Than Shwe played a cat-and-mouse game with the United Nations and the international media, denying access to aid groups during the cyclone and then allowing minimal access. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was finally allowed in, but saw only show tents in a show camp occupied by perhaps show cyclone victims, a perverted Potemkin village. Most of the aid delivered has disappeared. No way was the junta going to allow the USS Essex to dock in Rangoon to deliver supplies.

Financially, the junta is now flush with cash, receiving US$1 to 1.4 billion from natural gas sales, mostly to Thailand.

It has money to spend, on the Sr. General’s daughter’s wedding, private accounts in Dubai, and on its mechanisms of repression – it has had a regular army of 500,000 since the late 1980s, some of them forcibly conscripted children or adults of both genders – and on a new capital city called Naypyidaw or King’s Royal Abode.

Besides its unnecessarily large standing army, it also uses Hitlerite Brown Shirt type organizations; theUnion Solidarity and Development Association and the Swan Arr Shin, or Possessors of Strength, which it used to beat up and terrorize citizens in the Depayin Massacre, during the Saffron Revolution and to block aid from reaching cyclone survivors.

It has just emerged that North Korea has helped build tunnels in Naypyidaw, replete with a watchtower “tree” above ground, air vents and booby traps lined with punji sticks. These are sharpened bamboo sticks smeared with human excrement, a poor man’s biological weapon, in use at least since World War II. The existence of North Korean-built tunnels in Burma has been reported by Burma and Asia expert Bertil Lintner.

The North Korean ship, Kang Nam I – the first vessel monitored under U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing the regime for conducting an underground nuclear test in May – was allegedly carrying weapons to Burma, and is now reported to have turned around and headed back north.

Into this murky, complex soup, one U.N. Secretary-General falls. Ban Ki-moon headed to Burma over the weekend of July 4 with high hopes and little else.

He did not see Suu Kyi, the NLD, or the Sr. General. By Saturday, it was evident that Ban’s mission had failed. Suu Kyi’s kangaroo trial was going on. The junta’s excuse was that she was "under trial" – a Catch 22 of an excuse.

Ban went to Burma talking of national reconciliation and freeing all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, and the need for the 2010 elections by the junta to be free and fair.

The limited goal he did achieve was to raise the 2010 elections to the level of international debate. But it is uncertain as to whether the time, effort and money that went into this initiative has been well spent. Clearly, no one can talk with the junta if it refuses to talk. In all the elaborate schemes, it is never clear how the SPDC will be brought to the negotiating table.

The opposition is in the frustrating position of not being able to do much, except perhaps continue to raise a well-justified stink. The SPDC is said to have been surprised by the intensity and scope of the worldwide protests against Suu Kyi’s continued illegal detention. But there is no hint as to when she will be freed, along with all the political prisoners and Burma.

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(Dr. Kyi May Kaung is based in the United States, where she has worked for The Burma Fund as a senior research analyst. Copyright Kyi May Kaung.)