The human tragedies spawned by Asia's raging financial crisis have only just begun, analysts and economists say. For months to come, millions more will be thrown out of work and countless families will lack money for food.

More than 1,000 people died in riots in Jakarta, workers are on the warpath in Seoul, and across much of the once-wealthy region, similar tensions are just a scratch below the surface.

``In the next six to 12 months, I see things getting worse in terms of social instability and people's livelihood,'' said political strategist Sandra Lawson at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.

``Unemployment is going to continue...and I'm concerned about social unrest in all of the four crisis countries.'' These, said Lawson, are Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand -- all nations whereuntil last year a willingness to work was usually the only requirement for a reasonably comfortable and sometimes prosperous life.

The relentless flight of Western capital since a regional currency crisis started just over 12 months ago has dealt a body blow to these economies and made a mockery of their standards of living.

In Indonesia, where the annual per capita income was over $1,000 last year, almost half of the country's 200 million people will be unable to afford food by the end of 1998, the government says.

Unemployment has doubled in Thailand in 12 months. It has almost tripled in South Korea and Malaysia.

The National Statistics Office in Seoul says about 7,000 people are losing their jobs each day. Eighty per cent of the work force has taken pay-cuts since the crisis started last year, the local chamber of commerce says.

These countries are now trying to cope with contractions in their high-octane economies, unprecedented in the decades since they became part of the industrialisedworld.

In Indonesia, some analysts have estimated the contraction in the economy at 25 per cent this year, about the most severe that any nation in the world has gone through since World War Two.

Huge resources have gone into trying to ease the crisis in Asia. The International Monetary Fund has drawn up rescue plans totalling $120 billion for the battered economies of Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea.

But the message from Western government officials, local politicians and economists from the international institutions is chillingly constant -- the situation will get worse before it gets better.

What needs to be dismantled, Lawson says, is the economic policy hallmark that was remarkably similar in all these nations -- a cosy relationship between big business and a well entrenched political elite.

Weak regulatory systems in these countries -- much of which was linked to cronyism -- and their own economic success laid the seeds for the crisis.

``These governments were overwhelmed by theinflow of foreign capital and by economic success and they did not have any strong structural protection for the economy. So you essentially have a big bubble which just burst,''" Lawson said.

The IMF has laid great stress on structural reform, especially in the banking sector, but these efforts will take time. Meanwhile, currencies are depreciating, more people are out of jobs and poverty is increasing.

Governments have changed in all three nations that received IMF succour, but the changes they in turn must bring are overwhelming.

South Korea's Kim Dae-jung is fighting a running battle with the chaebol conglomerates that control the economy, Indonesia's BJ Habibie is still not sure of his position and Thailand's Chuan Leekpai has to guard a 12-seat majority in parliament against fractious coalition partners and an opposition that can scent opportunity in the economic upheaval.

In Malaysia, the public squabble between prime minister Mahathir Mohamed and his deputy Anwar Ibrahim is having grievousrepercussions on policy initiatives needed to pull the nation out of the economic impasse.

Professor of political economy Jeffrey Winters at Chicago's Northwestern University, says only strong, and clean, governments can bring about changes of the sort needed.

``A credible government which genuinely shares the burden always can ask the people to bear the burden faced during economic adjustment, because they have legitimacy, they are seen as clean,'' he told Reuters.

``If a government is not seen as clean and tells its people they have to suffer while its ministers are getting richer, then of course the people will not be willing to bear the burden.''

As the crisis deepened this year, the role of Japan and China has given even more cause for worry. Japan, the engine of growth for most Asian economies, is stalled and its economic problems are multiplying. Giant China, pressured by the fall of the yen, might have to devalue its own yuan currency and send Asia's beleaguered nations on yet another round ofcompetitive devaluations to maintain exports.

Beijing has assured regional governments that it will not devalue, but the weak yen and its need to boost its economy to absorb millions of workers to be thrown out of jobs by state sector restructuring may be overwhelming.

``I think China will devalue in the last quarter of this year or the first quarter of next year by about 15 to 25 per cent,'' David Folkerts-Landau, global head of emerging markets research at Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, told Reuters last week.

On Japan he said: ``In Asia you have the locomotive country exerting a very negative impact, so the difference between Japan and the United States in the 1994 Mexican crisis and the 1998-99 Asian crisis is just stunning.``You couldn't have had a worse financial environment for these countries.''

The economic reform and the restructuring that are now inevitable across Asia will bring much pain in its wake.

The suicides in South Korea, the turn to prostitution by Indonesian shop assistants and themillionaire making a living on a Bangkok street are only the early signs.

The decades-long boom across Asia's tiger economies brought with them a sense of assured employment and protection from the grinding poverty suffered in earlier years.

Now that security is all but wiped out, and it will be years before anything resembling it returns. What has made the situation worse is the relative absence in the region of formal safety net programmes that could have mitigated the suffering.

``Perhaps during a time of growth and full employment you don't think a lot about that (social safety nets),'' said Brian Atwood, head of the US Agency for International Development, during a recent visit to Jakarta.

``But I would suggest that the unemployment that has been suffered in Europe for many years now has not been as serious a political issue because the social safety nets were much stronger there.''

Management guru Peter Drucker sees a more worrying link between Asia and Europe. ``Fundamentally, the Asiancrisis is not economic but social,'' he said in a recent interview. ``Across the entire region, the social tensions are so high that it reminds me of the Europe of my youth that descended into two world wars.''