ON THE THAI-BURMESE BORDER — A cramped bamboo hut, a monthly rice ration, and listless days inside the Thai jungle are the lot of former Burmese guerrilla fighters and underground activists awaiting resettlement to America and Europe.

At a refugee camp three hours’ walk from the border with Burma, those who spent their 20s and 30s resisting one of the world’s most repressive governments are now largely quarantined from playing an active role in the events of their native country. That sense of isolation was most acute, they say, in August and September, when street demonstrations back home swelled into the largest popular challenge to the rule of Burma’s military junta in decades.

About 50 refugees gathered one night in one of the camp’s Nazarene schools to discuss what to do. They filled a notebook with messages to the demonstrators and had it smuggled into Burma, hoping that it would give heart to any who read it.

“Our fear gives the military junta life,” a former soldier, Myint Aung, recalled writing. “We must overcome the fear that we keep.”

On Sunday, the mood among several former fighters from an opposition army, the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, oscillated between hope and resignation. Their expectations centered on what people here have dubbed “Gambari’s fourth coming” — the scheduled trip next month to Burma by the U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari.

But for those who have reached middle age waiting for regime change, enthusiasm for diplomacy competes with a pessimistic belief that little short of bombarding the junta’s remote administrative capital, Naypyidaw, will cause the generals to share power.

“We need rockets to come down on Naypyidaw,” one former All Burma Students’ Democratic Front member said, asking that he not be identified for fear that advocating an act of war would harm his application for resettlement. “The U.S. or somebody can do like they did in Iraq, but no troops need to enter the country. This is the way. Demonstrations will only lead to more people being killed. I can’t encourage more people to demonstrate. Naypyidaw is a very clear target.”

The New York Sun is not printing the name of this refugee camp because several refugees fear that publicity could lead to new constraints by Thai authorities on their current freedom to seek humanitarian aid from foreign organizations independently.

The camp is one of nine run by Thailand that altogether house more than 150,000 Burmese refugees; it is reached by cratered roads that demand a truck.

About 15,000 residents live here. There is little to do, they say, but wait to leave. No jobs exist, and a vocational training program to prepare people for resettlement has too few slots. To supplement meager rations, some residents leave the camp for the jungle to gather bamboo and other edibles.

“Staying here is futureless,” Myint Aung said as he and six former comrades in arms sat together discussing where they intended to go. He said he plans to move to Texas, where he has a friend, but he does not know the name of the city.

Most camp residents belong to Burma’s Karen ethnic minority, which has been fighting against the Burmese government since 1949, one of the world’s longest ongoing wars.

The camp population received a new infusion of refugees in recent years, when Thai authorities began requiring those seeking resettlement to live in a camp. This brought in many non-Karen, including former political prisoners and members of the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, an army formed of students who fled to the Karen-controlled jungle after the Burmese government killed many demonstrators in 1988.

Before moving here, many of the ex-soldiers and former political prisoners were living in the Thai border town of Mae Sot, a hotbed of Burmese exile politics.

Tensions between the ethnic groups that make up Burma are present in the camp, although peaceful coexistence persists. The camp is segregated, with the Karen occupying a solid, continuous block of huts, largely because they were here first.

Kyaw Htin, who said he had “malaria about 100 times” during his 13 years in the jungle as a top commander with the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front, said he is sometimes shunned at the medical clinic, where the staff is predominately Karen.

“They want us to speak Karen,” Kyaw Htin said. “If we speak Burmese, they ignore us.”

This talkative, spiky-haired man, with an easy smile rarely found here, belongs to southern Burma’s Tavoyan ethnic minority. Like others, Kyaw Htin emphasizes that relations between the camp’s various groups are generally good.

“The Federal Union of Burma is being started here,” Kyaw Htin said, with a laugh. “A small federal union that is practice for our future.”

Kyaw Htin once visited Denmark and Norway with the goal, he said, to “learn the social welfare model” of government in preparation for regime change in Burma. But it is likely that Mr. Htin may never get to put what he learned to use: His current plan is to go with his family to Maryland.

The camp residents have their sights set on all corners of America.

For John Glenn, 38, a former political prisoner, the goal is North Carolina because of its many universities and speculation here that Carolinians have an unusually high life expectancy. Mr. Glenn, whose mother named him after an early American astronaut — he was born within minutes of the first lunar landing — served a two-year sentence for demonstrating in 1991. At the camp, Mr. Glenn organizes English lessons for more than 500 refugees.

In reviewing these applications, American officials may distinguish between those who served as soldiers, such as Kyaw Htin, and nonviolent activists such as Mr. Glenn.

American laws generally prohibit members of any armed resistance movement from receiving refugee status. Nonetheless, American immigration officials say each application is considered on a “case by case basis.” In the last year, 13,896 Burmese were resettled in America as refugees.

But not all living here intend to leave.

“If there is a way to fight against the regime at the moment, I prefer to take part in that,” an officer for the political wing of the Karen government, Sah Wan Tha, who has lived in the camp for a decade, said.