The senior general is occasionally seen in local media saluting Myanmar's powerful armed forces at parades and other state ceremonies, his jowls framing a plump, sullen face. He is also widely known to suffer from health problems, for which he frequently seeks medical care in Singapore, and some analysts wonder whether he still has the mental facilities and political judgment to manage the current crisis roiling his regime.

Rumors circulating in the Thailand-based Burmese-exile community contend that the military leader recently sent his close family members to Bangkok in case the protests spiral out of control. As the hardline junta's top general, Than Shwe would certainly have reason to fear if the growing protest movement eventually led to forced regime change.

Rights groups in Thailand have studiously chronicled the military regime's abuses, including well-documented allegations of forced labor, torture, systematic rape and the ill-treatment of many of the country's estimated 1,200 political prisoners. For many of those charges, rights groups contend, Than Shwe could be held directly responsible in an eventual international tribunal.

The introverted and superstitious leader is also known to be the driving force behind the junta's bizarre decision to move the national capital 400 kilometers north from Yangon to Naypyidaw in 2005. Some political analysts have speculated that the new capital was built toward the aim of re-establishing the country's long-abolished monarchy as part of a broader political transition where Than Shwe would assume a newly established throne.

Than Shwe, a high-school dropout, does not have particularly aristocratic roots, however. He was born in 1933, when Myanmar, then known as Burma, was still under British colonial rule. Those formative years under foreign rule may explain his regime's still-frequent warnings that Britain and the United States support subversive elements aimed at stirring unrest inside Myanmar toward the alleged aim of overthrowing the military government and securing privileged access to the country's rich bounty of natural resources, including large unexploited deposits of oil and gas.

Yet his regime's own relentless truth-twisting, severe censorship, endless sloganeering, and rampant jingoism are often referred to as Orwellian and have earned Myanmar critical international rebukes, including frequently from the United Nations. Than Shwe has the credentials for national thought control, based on his work dating back to the 1950s in the army's Psychological Operations Department, when he was involved in churning out nationalistic propaganda.

Later, his well-established shoot-to-kill instincts, particularly in counterinsurgency campaigns against minority ethnic-Karen guerrillas in the country's eastern regions, earned him a promotion to captain in 1960. He quickly ingratiated himself to the military's top brass by helping General Ne Win seize power in a 1962 military coup, ending the country's short post-independence experiment with democracy.

Than Shwe steadily climbed the ranks, at crucial junctures favoring bullets over ballots.

The current uprising led by Buddhist monks, pro-democracy activists and a growing number of ordinary people echoes a similar, failed popular insurrection in 1988, which Than Shwe and other military leaders crushed after city streets swelled with protesters.

An estimated 3,000 people perished in that idealistic attempt to topple the regime and restore democracy. Many people now fear an equally bloody confrontation could erupt amid the current clashes, and there have been reports that Than Shwe favors a heavy-handed response over possible negotiations.

During the military's internal squabbling after 1988, Ne Win was ousted in a coup and Than Shwe rose to the new hardline military regime's top spot in 1992. Ne Win died under house arrest in 2002.

It remains to be seen whether another ambitious soldier may use the current chaos as pretext to eclipse the ailing Than Shwe and seize power for a new military faction. Than Shwe's all-encompassing official titles include commander-in-chief of the military and chairman of the junta's ruling body, which he helped re-brand as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) from its harsher-sounding earlier incarnation as the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

Last year his government suffered a rare paparazzi-style scandal, when he hosted an unusually lavish wedding for his daughter. A 10-minute video clip, filmed at the wedding in the old capital Yangon, surfaced on the Internet purporting to show the bride, Thandar Shwe, swathed in sumptuous jewels - revealing the utter disparity in wealth between the military elite and the impoverished general population.

The champagne, five-star comforts and other opulence became a sore point among exile-based dissidents and the butt of jokes mocking Than Shwe and the junta's insistence that his military regime is not corrupt. This week, international corruption watchdog Transparency International ranked Myanmar, along with Somalia, as the most corrupt country in the world in the group's 180-country index for 2007.

Perhaps because of that record, Than Shwe has been the isolationist counter-force to moderates in the military leadership who have favored more engagement with the outside world and perhaps a more conciliatory approach to the political opposition. Than Shwe broke off the United Nations-supported secret dialogue with the political opposition in 2003 and he is known to harbor a personal grudge toward National League for Democracy and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, which has hampered national-reconciliation initiatives.

He reportedly reluctantly signed off on then-SPDC secretary No 1 Khin Nyunt's drive to have Myanmar elevated into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1997. However, membership failed to deliver the immediate economic gains the SPDC first envisaged, because of the regional financial crisis, and has more recently opened his government to more criticism of the SPDC's abysmal rights record and more neighborly pressure to implement democratic reforms. Khin Nyunt was removed in an internal 2004 purge and there are now indications Than Shwe is considering withdrawing Myanmar from the regional grouping.

Reporters Without Borders, a press-freedom group based in France, recently described Than Shwe as a "notoriously paranoid general" who keeps himself virtually mummified from his own countrymen in the new capital, Naypyidaw, which his government built at great expense and moved to in late 2005. News reports indicate that the reclusive general seldom leaves his personal villa and rarely personally addresses the SPDC leadership.

Than Shwe "makes very few public appearances, and most Burmese have never heard him speak", the press-freedom group said in a statement. "His militaristic speeches, harshly attacking the pro-democracy opposition, are read for him on the government radio and TV, and are given prominence by all government media."

However, it's likely the local media would revise the tone and substance of their reports about the aging dictator should he happen to be overthrown by the popular movement now testing his hold on political power.

Richard S Ehrlich is a Bangkok-based journalist from San Francisco, California. Shawn W Crispin is Asia Times Online's Southeast Asia Editor.