Born by the name of Shu Maung, to a Sino-Burmese family at Paungdale, Ne Win's early career reflected many of the key episodes in Burma's independence struggle. Always a bluff military man, he never displayed the political subtleties of his contemporary, Aung San. Friends remember his initial passions were for sport, especially football. Having failed exams to study medicine at Rangoon University, he became a postal clerk.

From the 1930s, he became increasingly caught up in the anti-British agitations of the time. Through his uncle, Thakin Nyi, he joined the nationalist Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association), and, in 1941, accompanied Aung San as one of the famed "30 comrades" who travelled to Hainan island for military training by imperial Japan. Renamed Ne Win (Brilliant as the Sun), he returned home a few months later as an officer in the newly-formed Burma independence army (BIA). By 1943, he was its commander-in-chief.

Dissatisfaction with the Japanese occupation soon set in, and, in March 1945, the BIA leaders turned against the Japanese as British forces reinvaded Burma. But while Aung San and many colleagues now resigned to enter politics, Ne Win stayed in the military. During these years, he worked closely with the British - as a delegate to the 1945 Kandy conference with Lord Mountbatten and, later, as commander of Burmese forces in Operation Flush, to drive out communist insurgents from the Pyinmana hills.

But, in private, Aung San had begun to express concerns about his wartime comrade, which his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, referred to many years later. "My father didn't build up the Burmese army in order to suppress the people," she said.

A labyrinthine sequence of events now catapulted Ne Win to the national forefront. The 1947 assassination of Aung San gave tragic warnings of the turbulence to come. In a country known as the Yugoslavia of southeast Asia, the transition to independence was always likely to be fraught. Communist insurrections and army mutinies in 1948 were followed by rebellions that quickly spread among the Karens, Mons and other ethnic groups. As fighting raged on the doorstep of Rangoon, the parliamentary government of U Nu only just survived.

In February 1949, Ne Win replaced the Karen, Smith Dun, as army chief-of-staff, and using his old regiment, the 4th Burma Rifles, as the nucleus, began to rebuild the Burmese armed forces. It was his finest hour. But in the 1950s, with resistance continuing, he became increasingly dissatisfied with what he saw as the failure of politicians to overcome factionalism in government and insurgencies in the field. From 1958 to 1960, he briefly assumed power as prime minister during an interim military administration. Then, in 1962, as ethnic tensions increased, he seized power in a military coup and brought to an end the short era of democracy. "Federalism is impossible," he claimed. "It will destroy the union."

For 26 years, Burma disappeared behind a bamboo curtain. In effect, Ne Win's strategy was two-fold: to build up a monolithic system of government under the Burma Socialist Programme party, while launching all-out offensives against insurgent groups in the countryside. Foreigners were expelled, the economy nationalised, hundreds of political leaders imprisoned, and, when students protested at Rangoon University in July 1962, the union building was dynamited, with dozens killed or wounded.

Ne Win's political ideas, however, were always vaguely sketched. Close friends believe that his inspiration for power came on a visit to China in 1960 to sign a border agreement with Zhou Enlai. In later years, he showed house guests a fading film clip of his meetings, which he thought put him on a par with Chairman Mao and the Chinese leaders. "Chairman" Ne Win soon became his favoured title. But there was never any real evolution to Ne Win's "Burmese way to socialism", an admixture of Buddhist, Marxist and nationalist principles outlined in just one thin book, The System Of Correlation Of Man And His Environment. Burma's restive minorities, in contrast, saw it as simply a guise for "Burmanisation".

Far from quelling opposition, Ne Win's tactics created a new cycle of insurgencies. At one stage, the deposed prime minister U Nu also took up arms with the Karens and Mons in the Thai borderlands, while Beijing lent military backing to the Communist party of Burma in the mountainous northeast. Moreover, the attempt to create a social ist economy, in international isolation, badly failed. With the black market rampant, economic statistics in Burma, said a World Bank visitor, were a "modern-day fairytale". Everything from jade and opium to medicines and luxury goods were daily smuggled across the frontiers.

As the years went by, Ne Win's behaviour became increasingly obtuse. Many of his actions were decided by omens and astrological predictions. Most bizarrely, in the 1980s he twice demonetised the Burmese currency, wiping out the savings of millions of citizens overnight and reintroducing notes in awkward 45 and 90 kyat denominations. As everyone knew, nine was his lucky number (4+5 = 9), and it increasingly recurred in official pronouncements.

Ne Win's family life was also the subject of much speculation. Officially, he was thought to have been married five times: to Daw Tin Tin in the 1930s, Kitty Ba Than in the 1940s, June Rose Bellamy (an Anglo-Burmese) and Daw Ni Ni Myint, a history professor whom he married twice. Through these marriages, he had five children and gained five stepchildren. In particular, friends say that it was after the death of Kitty Ba Than in 1972 that his character most changed. But according to the Buddhist abbot, Venerable U Rewata Dhamma, it was never money, but power, that corrupted him.

All the time, the economy was sinking to the brink of bankruptcy. In July 1988, the 77 year-old Ne Win suddenly resigned, triggering pro-democracy protests across the country that were crushed that September when his loyalists seized power in the present-day state peace and development council (SPDC). In his resignation speech, Ne Win had ominously warned: "When the army shoots, it shoots to hit."

Subsequently, he retired from public life, although he remained a figure of influence within the Burmese armed forces. Much of his time was spent in Buddhist meditation, and, in one of his last public appearances in 2001, he offered lunch at the Sedona hotel to his auspicious number of 99 Buddhist monks. Few people were expecting substantial changes for Burma until after his passing.

Early this year, however, there was a final twist, when the SPDC arrested Ne Win's favourite daughter, Sandar Win, with whom he was living, along with her husband and their three sons, and accused them of plotting a military coup. By now in his 90s, Ne Win was not publicly accused, but he was placed under house arrest with Sandar. His son-in-law and three grandsons received the death penalty, which is presently subject to appeal.

The post-Ne Win era had started. A Tito or Franco-like figure, he had done much to keep his country together in the difficult post-independence years. One confidante described him as the "last great Asian despot," who would be proud if his epitaph was to have kept Burma free from the crises of modernisation and international power struggles that affected its neighbours.

He left Burma, however, facing a very uncertain future and, in a country that has become synonymous with human rights abuses, it is unlikely that the historic judgment will be so forgiving.

· Ne Win (Shu Maung), Burmese military strongman, born May 24 1911; died December 5 2002