Myanmar's crackdown on the pro-democracy opposition will bring more pain and hardships to its people. This could spell trouble, but the military regime is unyielding.
Already one of the world's poorest countries, long-suffering Myanmar is about to be hit with a triple whammy.
The United States will soon ban all made-in-Myanmar products. Aid from Japan is drying up. And the European Union has expanded its embargo on anything to do with Yangon's military regime.
The prospects look awful for Myanmar's impoverished masses, with the worst yet to come when the new sanctions start to bite in the months ahead.
Some 350,000 workers, mostly women in about 400 garment factories across the country, will lose their jobs because of US laws forbidding imports from Myanmar.
Last year, 85 per cent of its textiles, clothing and footwear totalling US$356 million were exported to the US. Even without the ban, Myanmar's textile quotas to the US would have expired next year.
America's new laws will force the factories to close unless Myanmar can find new markets, but this won't be easy. It faces stiff competition from China and Vietnam.
Washington will also freeze the junta's assets in the US, ban remittances to Myanmar, and block any application by the military government for soft loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
INCREASING ISOLATION
On another level, Myanmar will also miss out on President George W. Bush's Enterprise for Asean Initiative, which offers the prospect of bilateral free trade pacts for South-east Asian countries which are committed to economic reforms and openness.
Myanmar's unreformed economy won't qualify. It was a bit player in last year's US$120-billion two-way trade in goods between the US and Asean; and little of American investments in Asean, which totalled US$53 billion last year, found their way to Myanmar, a forbidden land for business under US laws.
Asean membership in 1997 may have ended Myanmar's diplomatic isolation but the country has yet to reap any economic benefits from that opening.
There are other factors discouraging foreign investments in Myanmar.
US oil giant Unocal Corporation is facing a legal suit in California, accused of being implicated in the forced labour, murders and rapes allegedly committed by Myanmar troops during the construction of the Yadana gas pipeline in 1990s.
So far, more than 40 American companies have pledged to bypass Myanmar products because of its human rights violations and repressive policies.
One of America's largest retailing chains, May Department Stores, will stop selling goods made in Myanmar, following a boycott campaign spearheaded by the Free Burma Coalition.
In the EU, the London-based Burma Campaign UK is targeting British companies doing business with Myanmar. Among those that have quit the country to protect their reputations are lingerie maker Triumph International and Premier Oil.
British American Tobacco, which has a cigarette factory in Myanmar employing more than 500 workers, is resisting pressure from the British government to pull out.
Britain has not banned investments in Myanmar, but Prime Minister Tony Blair has said trade with the junta was 'not appropriate', and his government is pressing the EU to tighten its sanctions on the regime.
Myanmar's shrinking economy is evident to any visitor: Many new hotels in Yangon have only 30 per cent occupancy, even during the peak season. Tourist arrivals have fallen sharply in recent months, and the Sars outbreak has made things worse.
With inflation at over 20 per cent and a bank run last January, there seems no end to Myanmar's troubles.
A MORTAL THREAT
According to Dr Peter Carey of Oxford University, the Myanmar government gets its revenue from three main sources: gas from the Andaman Sea, which will yield about US$800 million (S$1.4 billion) this year; illicit money from drugs; and massive Chinese aid.
In January, Beijing wrote off part of Yangon's debt, gave the junta US$200 million in soft loans and promised more new industrial projects.
But all this is not enough for the junta, which reportedly spends a third of its budget on the military.
Japan, a major aid donor, has given Myanmar debt relief worth 11.3 billion yen (S$160 million) over the past five years. But last month, pressured by the US, it cut off new aid.
Myanmar is now asking the richer Asean countries for more aid and investments. But the junta is unlikely to get much help because of the international outcry over its re-arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her third incarceration since 1989.
The generals took the Nobel Peace laureate into 'protective custody' after pro-junta groups ambushed her motorcade and attacked her supporters on May 30 in northern Myanmar.
The build-up to the attack was long in the brew, ever since Ms Suu Kyi began travelling outside Yangon a year ago to rebuild her party, the National League for Democracy.
NLD spokesman U Lwin told the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norwegian-backed radio station, that she was harassed last April by local authorities, which used loud music to drown out her speeches during her trip to Chin state in western Myanmar.
Last October, during a visit to Arakan state, she had to clamber up a fire-truck to stop its driver from using water canons to disperse some 20,000 people who had come out to welcome her.
Ms Suu Kyi has to contend with the Union Solidarity and Development Association, a grassroots movement with Senior General Than Shwe, chairman of the ruling State Peace and Development Council, as patron.
Myanmar's generals created the mass movement, which claims 16 million members, after brutally suppressing a nationwide revolt against military rule in 1988.
There is speculation that the generals are divided over how to deal with Ms Suu Kyi, but there is no doubt that they agree on one thing: Her popularity poses a mortal threat to their rule.
That rule lost its legitimacy after the junta repudiated the NLD's sweeping electoral victory in 1990 and is being maintained only at gunpoint.
REGIME CHANGE?
The question that begs to be asked: Could the people's worsening economic plight, aggravated by new economic sanctions, and anger over Ms Suu Kyi's detention, combine to spark regime change?
Myanmar has been under military rule for four decades and the last time its people revolted, back in 1988, thousands were killed.
If it happens again, the casualties will be higher because the army, now better equipped, has grown to 325,000 troops. This is why the well-entrenched generals see no reason to resume political talks with Ms Suu Kyi.
They claim that she is influenced by the outlawed Burmese Communist Party, and blame her for instigating restive ethnic minorities against the government.
Above all, they regard the NLD leader as a proxy of Western powers. For Senior General Than Shwe, her support for Western sanctions proves that she is in cahoots with 'neo-colonialists'.
Unstinting Western support, such as the US$1-million 'Free Spirit' prize which the US-based Freedom Forum foundation awarded to Ms Suu Kyi in February for her pro-democracy struggle, deepens the regime's distrust of her.
The junta has made half-hearted attempts at change. Several hundred political prisoners have been released in the past year, but the intimidation and arrest of NLD supporters continue. According to the International Red Cross, about 1,500 political prisoners are still in jail.
Last January, in a bid to ward off economic sanctions, the junta invited the Bush administration for talks, seeking an 'open, constructive dialogue towards humanitarian, economic and political development in Myanmar'.
It wanted 'American cooperation in education, health pragmatic, useful advice on making the transition to a stable democracy'.
Washington rebuffed the overture.
But the regime's lobbyists did succeed in getting Mr David Rockefeller, the 87-year-old former chairman and CEO of Chase, one of America's top banks, to visit Myanmar.
After a 10-day stay, Mr Rockefeller declared that he found the 'partial liberalisation encouraging'. But little came of it.
The junta has weathered international ostracism for the past 13 years, neither responding to incentives for democratic reforms nor pressures to hand over power to civilians. There is no sign that its hardline policies are about to change.
As a result, American lawmakers are becoming impatient with the regime. Senate Deputy Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for one has noted that misrule in Myanmar 'distracts Asean from other important issues'.
Asean countries would find the US 'a less willing negotiating partner' unless they took firm action against the regime, he warned. The junta 'is pulling down the region, and it is time that its neighbours owned up to their responsibility in fixing this problem once and for all', he said last week. 'The Asean policy of non-interference will not stand.'
But Myanmar's generals feel secure in the belief that China, its chief benefactor, will not intervene in its domestic affairs, just as they repose confidence in Asean's hands-off policy.
As long as Yangon's internal politics do not become a security problem for its Asean neighbours, the junta will be left to its devices.
In the meantime, Myanmar's already hobbled economy will be crippled, bringing immeasurable suffering to most of its 49 million people. The generals, though, have a high pain threshold, and they will remain pre-occupied with little else beside their power. The country is bound to be on the boil for some time.
TRIPLE WOES
1. The US will ban all made-in-Myanmar products. The junta's assets in the US will be frozen, remittances to Myanmar will be banned, application by the Myanmar government for soft loans from the World Bank and the IMF will be blocked.
2. Japan, a major aid donor to Myanmar with debt relief worth 11.3 billion yen over the past five years, has cut any new aid to the country.
3. The European Union has expanded its embargo on Myanmar. London-based Burma Campaign UK is targeting British companies doing business there and British PM Tony Blair is pressing the EU to tighten its sanctions on the Myanmar regime.
THE SUU KYI FACTOR
The re-arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi reflects how the generals see her popularity as a mortal threat to their rule.
Will the worsening economic plight, plus the new sanctions, and increasing anger over Ms Suu Kyi's detention combine to spark regime change?
Myanmar has been under military rule for four decades and the last time its people revolted in 1988, thousands were killed.
If it there is another revolt, there will be more casualties because the army is now larger and better equipped.
So the well-entrenched generals see no reason to resume political talks with Ms Suu Kyi.