The Monks' Uprising.(World Affairs)(Myanmar)

Burma's holy men turn on an unpopular regime that has long depended on them.

It started, as revolutions often do, over issues of bread and butter. In mid-August, enraged by a doubling of the state-set fuel price, thousands of Burmese took to the streets. Then the unexpected happened: the country's exalted Buddhist monks joined the fray. Soon, cinnamon-robed marchers were leading columns of angry citizens, coalescing into what Trevor Wilson, Australia's former ambassador to Burma, calls "a symbiotic uprising." At first, the troops kept to their barracks. But then, last Wednesday, "they saw that [demonstrations] were building up rather than dying down," says Wilson -- and the crackdown began.

Just what's happened since remains unclear, as foreign media have been banned from the country. But there are chilling signs of a crackdown similar to the one in 1988, after pro-democracy demonstrations paralyzed Burma. In that episode, some 3,000 people were ultimately killed. Now human-rights groups and the few foreign journalists in Rangoon report mass arrests by truncheon-wielding riot troops and scattered shootings; a handful of protesters have been killed. Civilians are said to be acting as human shields to protect the monks, and vice versa. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi -- Burma's long-detained pro-democracy leader and arguably the nation's highest moral authority -- has reportedly been moved by her captors from house arrest to jail. What happens next will depend on "the resilience, the determination and the bravery of the people," said Britain's top diplomat in Burma, Mark Canning, in a telephone interview.

Whatever transpires, Burma's brutal military government, which has ruled the country since 1962, faces an existential crisis of its own making. The junta, which refused to honor the results of elections held in 1990 after Suu Kyi and her fellow democrats won by a landslide, has persistently staked its legitimacy on its self-declared mission to preserve national unity and defend Buddhist tradition. To bolster its religious credentials, it has funded new monasteries (the country has an estimated 300,000 monks) and showered friendly Buddhist clergymen with lavish gifts. Leaders regularly visit religious sites where they burn incense, give alms (a crucial way to gain merit) or inaugurate new buildings. Burma's 74-year-old strongman, Gen. Than Shwe, made one such stop last November when, according to state media reports, he drove home nine jewel-encrusted stakes with a gold mallet to demark a new pagoda.

After China crushed the Tiananmen uprising in 1989, Beijing sought to win back public loyalty by dramatically improving living standards. Burma's government, in contrast, has talked reform but failed to deliver, and the economy of this resource-rich nation is now in tatters. Government handouts haven't blinded the monks to the everyday suffering many encounter. ''This is about a whole host of economic pressures, and the monks are a very interesting barometer," says Canning.

The tipping point seems to have come recently when, thanks to inflation, the communities on which monks depend for alms were suddenly rendered unable to afford to feed the customary two meals a day. The holy men took to the streets in anger.

Their frustration seems to be almost universally shared. State ...