Sun Sep 30, 2:06 PM ET

BANGKOK, Thailand - Hunkered down in their war rooms hundreds of miles from mass protests, the aging, hard-line generals in Myanmar are known as a suspicious lot who view the West with disdain and depend on browbeaten advisers and astrologers to guide them.

Much like Myanmar's former kings, they see themselves as the only ones capable of ruling, and their army as the only force that can transform the country into a modern state.

Anyone questioning their 45 years of supremacy, whether a lone protester or tens of thousands on the streets of Yangon, is simply seen as a threat and dealt with the same brute force.

"They are moving to put down what they consider a threat to the nation," said Mary Callahan, a Myanmar expert at the University of Washington. "I think these senior officers really believe they have done right by their country and the protesters are threatening the stability of the country and threatening what they consider the progress they brought."

The demonstrations are the stiffest challenge to the ruling junta in two decades, a crisis that began Aug. 19 with protests over a fuel price hike then expanded dramatically about two weeks ago when Buddhist monks joined the protests.

Since Wednesday, soldiers and riot police have clubbed, shot and detained demonstrators in Yangon, formerly known as Rangoon, the largest city in what used to be called Burma. At least 10 people were killed, dozens injured and hundreds detained, including Buddhist monks whose monasteries were shot up and destroyed in overnight raids by security forces.

The heavy-handed response, analysts said, was not surprising given the junta's long history of snuffing out all dissent since the country's independence in 1948. For decades, they have also waged a brutal war against ethnic groups in which soldiers have razed villages, raped women and killed innocent civilians — atrocities that continue to this day.

Since the 1980s, they have detained and tortured thousands of political prisoners including Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader who has been under house arrest for almost 12 of the past 18 years.

When hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets peacefully in 1988, the military opened fire, killing as many as 3,000.

The generals' problem, said David Mathieson, a consultant with Human Rights Watch in Thailand, is that "They don't listen to their own population. They honestly think they are the only ones capable of doing this."

Senior Gen. Than Shwe, who launched his military career fighting ethnic insurgencies, embodies the regime he heads. In the top leadership post since 1992, he is regularly on the front pages of state media in his drab military uniform.

"He commands loyalty. He seems like the archetypal soldier," said Razali Ismail, a former U.N. special envoy to Myanmar who has met Than Shwe numerous times. "He believes himself to be very much a patriot, a nationalist. He speaks often about the sacrifices that he and his generation and his soldiers have made."

Described by Western diplomats who have met him as humorless, stiff and xenophobic, Than Shwe rarely says anything in public except at the annual Armed Forces Day — an ostentatious display featuring as many as 15,000 troops and the latest military hardware from China, India and Russia.

This year, the 74-year-old general used the occasion to warn that the nation still faces danger from "powerful countries" that are trying to weaken the military.

"They will try to sow the seeds of discord and dissension not only among national races but also within each particular ethnic group in various spheres such as religion, ideologies, social classes," he said.

In recent years, as his health has declined, Than Shwe's behavior has become increasingly bizarre, diplomats and analyst said. Almost overnight, he moved the capital in 2005 to an isolated jungle outpost 250 miles north of Yangon and named it Naypyitaw or "Royal City."

To mark his first Armed Forces Day there, he built gigantic statues of former Burmese kings, a Western diplomat recalled, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He has regal pretensions."

These days, Thang Shwe's declining health has forced him to remain mostly in Naypyitaw where he depends on cowed junior officers and even his astrologer for guidance, Myanmar analyst Larry Jagan and others said.

One of his few trips outside the capital was to his daughter's wedding last year in Yangon, which angered many Burmese because it cost $300,000 and the couple received wedding gifts worth $50 million, according to Irrawaddy, a respected online magazine covering Burmese affairs.

A video of the wedding can be found on YouTube.

The junta claims credit for modernizing Myanmar. It has doubled the size of the army to 400,000 and opened the isolated, impoverished country of 54 million people to foreign investment. It also ended fighting with several ethnic groups and built scores of new roads, bridges, pagodas and schools.

But its aggressive push to develop the country was not matched by progress in the political arena. Fearful of another 1988 uprising, it responded to its loss of the 1990 elections by refusing to hand over power and imprisoning Suu Kyi.

History suggests the military will stay united, despite unconfirmed rumors in Yangon of a few soldiers refusing to fire on crowds last week or turning on one another. Soldiers have plenty of incentives to remain loyal — they and their families get better food, housing, health care and other benefits than ordinary Burmese.

"The military leadership may have disagreements and personality conflicts but those have never erupted into anything politically significant because they realized they are all better off sticking together," Callahan said.