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Mongolia

Geopolitics

Mongolian Soldiers Accuse The Military Of Using “Torture” To Maintain Discipline

Illegal punishment through the use of torture is increasingly common in Mongolia’s military, where 44 soldiers have died and 468 violations have been reported in the last decade, according to a 2022 report. Many former soldiers have been physically abused and harassed. After hearing recent reports of torture, the commission has begun training mental health professionals to serve in the military to help.

ZUUNBAYAN — Bayartsogt Jargalsaikhan had been guarding the weapons warehouse since midnight in the January freeze, and he was cold. Five minutes before his shift ended, he went inside to warm up.

That fateful decision in 2017 would get Bayartsogt and his fellow soldiers tortured by their commanding officer, leaving him permanently disabled and making him one more statistic in Mongolia’s long history of human rights violations inside the military.

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The Last Reindeer Herder: One Woman’s Fight To Save A Mongolian Tradition

Her museum houses relics of a disappearing culture in the frozen taiga. Will cash payments and new language classes be enough to help her save the Dukha way of life?

TSAGAANNUUR — In the forested, snowy mountains of Tsaatan, a herdsman and his family tie his reindeer herd to trees to let them graze. Uvugdorj Delger, 70, is Dukha, but he speaks to the children in the Mongolian language. When asked why he doesn’t speak the Dukha language, he sighs and says only elders like him speak it now.

The Dukha are the last reindeer herders of Mongolia. Many live deep in the taiga of north Mongolia, where temperatures can drop to minus 53 degrees Celsius in the winter and rarely rise above 23 in the summer (a swing in Fahrenheit from 63 below zero to 73 degrees). Although historically related to the ethnic Tuva people, who live in parts of Mongolia, Russia and China, the 427 Dukha of Tsagaannuur soum have their own traditions and speak a distinct variety of the Tuva language.

The pristine nature of the taiga and the rareness of reindeer husbandry persuade a few tourists to endure the bumpy roads — passable only by horse during the summer — to come here, where they can ride reindeer, sleep in traditional Dukha tents, called urts in Mongolian (not to be confused with the Mongolian yurt), and buy handicrafts made from reindeer antlers.

Whatever memorable travel stories they take with them, however, overlooks a difficult reality for the Dukha — one of land, culture and language loss.

With environmental protections encroaching on their traditional territory, and many Dukha increasingly leaving the taiga and assimilating into Mongolian society, Dukha culture could be lost forever in a few generations. “All we have left is our reindeer and our urts,” says Uvugdorj.

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Mongolia Is Late To The Internet, And Falling Prey To Digital Fraud

The internet is a new experience for many in the country. That makes people easy prey.

DALANZADGAD — After a lifetime spent tending to cattle in the Mongolian countryside, Sainaa Tserenjigmed settled in the provincial capital of Dalanzadgad and began dreaming of a house of her own.

To build it, she would need a loan of 30 million Mongolian togrogs ($8,800), an amount that seemed out of reach until Sainaa stumbled across a comment on Facebook offering low-interest loans without guarantors. Her interest was piqued.

It was early 2018 and the internet was still a brave new world for Sainaa. The previous year, she’d bought herself a small, white smartphone and her son installed internet at home. “Facebook seemed new and strange, so I started digging tirelessly,” she says. Soon, she was using the platform to watch videos, keep up with the news and communicate with her family and friends.

The person offering loans on Facebook had a foreign-sounding name but his online persona seemed trustworthy to Sainaa and he had many friends, lots of whom were Mongolians. She reached out, expressing a desire to take out a loan.

The response was quick, she says, and the subsequent correspondence unusually friendly. Sainaa was instructed to transfer $120 as a processing fee to receive the first tranche of money. To speed up the process, she decided to schedule four separate transactions in different amounts via Western Union, two to three days apart, amounting to $1,000 in total — more than twice the average monthly salary in Mongolia at the time.

But the person kept asking for more money.

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Ancient Tradition Or Child Labor? Riding With The Child Jockeys Of Mongolia

Horse racing is a time-honored tradition that often uses children as jockeys, despite the nation’s minimum working age laws — and the inherent dangers.

URGUUTIIN TAL, MONGOLIA — Soyombo Myagmarsuren, 13, began racing when he turned 6, following in the footsteps of generations of horse trainers. “I love horses,” he says, beaming with pride. “It is cool to gallop on a horse mane until the wind whistles.”

These days, Soyombo walks with a limp. Last winter, he fell from a horse while training for a race.

So he did not race competitively in this year’s Naadam, a summer celebration of Mongolian sovereignty believed to have existed since the second century B.C. and held regularly since 1639. The internationally recognized celebration is referred to locally as the “Three Games of Men,” given its showcase of wrestling, archery and horse racing.

These sports symbolize strength, wisdom and courage, respectively. (Despite the name, women and girls now also compete in the latter two.)

In the races, horses run courses of 12 to 26 kilometers (7 to 16 miles) across the steppe, depending on the animal’s age. And on their backs it is young boys and girls like Soyombo, typically between the ages of 6 and 13, whose courage is on display.

Child jockeys — preferred because they do not weigh down horses — are integral to Mongolian horse racing. Mongolian law now stipulates that jockeys competing at Naadam should be no younger than 8 — despite the legal working age being 16 — and forbids racing and long-distance training during winter. But rights activists say these regulations are frequently flouted.

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Green
Uranchimeg Tsogkhuu*

As More Land Turns to Desert, Fights Over Water Erupt In Mongolia

There are too many animals for the available water supply in the Gobi desert region. The situation worsens each year.

DALANZADGAD — The scorching sun glares at them from directly above, and everything under their feet is parched, dusty and barren. The sheep and goats squeal and squeak, their nostrils sunken, their eyes glazed. Batbaatar Tsedevsuren, a herder with more than two decades of experience, knows this is how his animals behave when extremely thirsty.

He has walked with his 700 animals for several days in Mongolia’s Gobi desert in search of water and green pastures, when suddenly Batbaatar sees a well, and a fellow herder sitting on its edge. He comes closer with a smile, he later recalls, but the herder doesn’t reciprocate. “There is no water in the well,” the other herder quickly says. Batbaatar knows that isn’t true, and that the herder is just acting stingy. But he can’t afford a fight.

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Economy
Nansalmaa Oyunchimeg, Myagmarsuren Battur

Mongolia, How The "Switch To Austerity” Sparked A National Uprising

The Asian country is experiencing record inflation and soaring food costs as imports dry up due to the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ULAANBAATAR — In the shadows of an immense statue of Chinggis Khaan, the founder of the Mongol empire, thousands gather. They stand outside the Government Palace to demand officials remedy the ever-increasing cost of living.

A young demonstrator holds up a mirror, asking if Mongolian government officials can bear to look themselves in the face, while others chant “Do your job” during the two-day dissent in April. The protest signals a breaking point for citizens who struggle to keep up with rising costs. They accuse the government of neglecting its duty to remedy the situation and forcing people to consider fleeing the country.

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Coronavirus
Khorloo Khukhnokhoi

Mongolian Herbal Medicine, A COVID Revival Takes Root

Traditional medicines, once banned, have regained favor. Government and health officials are endorsing them alongside COVID-19 vaccinations.

ERDENET, ORKHON PROVINCE, MONGOLIA — The water steams, then bubbles to a boil. Bayarjargal Togmid takes the pot off the stove and stirs in a bright yellow grass, known as manjingarav.

“This plant is excellent against coughing,” she says. “I drink it now and mix it with water so that my children often gargle their throats and mouths with it. It is far more effective than regular medicines.”

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Society
Stefano Lupieri

How Altered Consciousness Is Changing Psychiatry

From self-induced trance to psychedelics, altered states of consciousness are experiencing a renewed interest in the scientific community for their therapeutic value.

GENEVA — Swiss psychiatrist Valérie Picard describes her weekly trance practice as being plunged into a feeling of intense happiness: “I often find myself parachuted into magnificent natural landscapes. With a feeling of weightlessness all my perceptions are amplified, in a kind of ecstasy of the senses”

Working at the Belmont Clinic in Geneva, she does not, however, have the sort of profile of someone traditionally interested in these techniques. These explorations of states of consciousness are still considered by many to be controversial.

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Green
Dolgormaa Sandagdorj

Global Warming Could Sink Mongolia's "Permafrost Highway"

Mongolia built an extensive road network on a permafrost foundation. Now, the permafrost is melting.

ALAG-ERDENE, KHUVSGUL PROVINCE, MONGOLIA — Munkhbaatar Tumur mounts a scope on a metal tripod and peers through it. He assesses the elevation of a road that stretches across the steppe and into the mountains.

He is a general engineer at Khuvsgul-AZZA, a state-owned corporation responsible for maintaining the roads in this northernmost province, on the border with Russia. Today, he and his team are repairing bulging and sunken asphalt along the road, which stretches more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) up to Khuvsgul Lake.

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food / travel
Martin de Bourmont*

The Limits Of Modern Privacy, Lessons From Mongolia

Each night I return home to one of the greatest luxuries available to human beings: an empty room. There is no one to speak to if I do not wish to make conversation, and no one to make demands of me as I sit idly in front of my window.

I only became conscious of this privilege when I moved to Mongolia two years ago. Most of my friends there, including those living in apartments and houses, shared one room with the rest of their immediate family. To be alone, they had to leave home.

In a typical Mongolian household, washing, changing, cooking and relaxation all take place in the company of others. There is literally no room for private thoughts.

Perhaps the flipside of this lack of privacy is an apparent fear of solitude. Seeing someone walking alone will strike most as bizarre, or at least not something one would freely choose.

This understanding of solitude as a form of suffering extends even to the most marginalized members of the population. In Khovd, the rural Mongolian town where I lived, there was a mentally disabled man who would spend most of his time at the local airport. He'd approach travelers with a smile, extending his hand, and they'd greet him in return as they would any acquaintance. He'd get paid to carry suitcases and the security guards would shake his hand and give him a friendly on the back every morning. When not at the airport, the man could be seen wandering around the town market. The restaurants let him eat for free and at night a generous relative offers him shelter.

While part of the reason for this munificence stems from sympathy for the man's condition, it is also a symptom of that fear of loneliness. To see a man wandering the streets alone is to bear witness to the worst kind of destitution. Forget cash or real estate: True wealth in rural Mongolia is social.

Historical factors can help explain this state of affairs. In times of great crisis, Mongolians have seen entire societies implode. Before the Soviet Union collapsed, both urban and rural Mongolians depended on the country's status as a Soviet satellite state for bureaucratic employment. These jobs vanished with the end of the Cold War. Deprived of employment prospects, many urban Mongolians flocked back to the countryside in hopes of returning to the nomadic herding lifestyle of their parents and grandparents; and yet many quickly discovered that the collectivist systems that once supported generations of nomadic herders had ceased to exist.

More recently, Mongolian herders have found themselves struggling with an exceptionally harsh and fickle climate. In 2002 and 2010, severe winters known as zud killed millions of livestock.

Unable to survive as herders, those afflicted by the zud and intensifying desertification have begun migrating to the capital Ulaanbaatar in search of employment. The city the former herders discover is expensive, polluted, and — by Mongolian standards — cramped. Finding their footing in such an alien place requires new arrivals to request the assistance of family members and friends already present in the city.

Periods of crisis aside, Mongolian life is inherently collaborative. Those who live in gers, the Mongolian term for yurts, spend a substantial portion of each day maintaining their homes. One must feed the stove coal, wood or dung to keep warm, fetch water to wash and cook with, and regularly sweep the floors in order to keep dust and dirt at bay. Since those who live in gers have work that keeps them away from home for hours at a time — whether as herders, builders, or even university professors — it is important that someone stays at home or at least returns periodically to complete the tasks necessary to keep the ger clean and livable.

Though living in central Ulaanbaatar may now resemble life in Seoul or Beijing, many urban Mongolians living in provincial cities or on the capital's urban periphery continue to live a profoundly communal life. It is not uncommon for Mongolian families to live in one-room apartments composed of a kitchen and a living room. Grandparents living in close proximity will stop by to take care of the family's children during the day and large meals will be taken with friends and family throughout the week.

All this is likely the product of centuries spent living in gers, where one had no choice but to live and work with others every hour of every day merely to survive. Combating subzero temperatures for months, raising large herds, and securing food and water for one's family are not tasks that can be accomplished alone.

In developed Western countries, on the other hand, cooperation and constant devotion to a collective no longer holds much appeal. Instead we see ourselves as unique individuals, whose personal ambitions and experiences merit as much consideration as the aspirations and needs of our communities.

While I, like many of my contemporaries, often deplore what we perceive as the rampant selfishness and narcissism apparent in 21st century Western life, I remain a product of my time and place. I resent being told to think or act in certain ways, even — and sometimes especially — if these injunctions are intended for my benefit.

Like most of my liberal-minded American and European friends, I assign great value to my privacy. Protecting one's privacy and finding space for solitude, we believe, are indispensable components of a life worth living.

Mongolian "gers' in Khovd — Photo: Bernd Thaller

It is, of course, up for debate how much we truly value solitude, privacy, and independent thought. Each day, we silently acquiesce to government and corporate surveillance as we navigate the Internet. We spend most of our days online not only because we appreciate the vast quantities of human knowledge it stores but because we cannot bear to be disconnected from friends, family, acquaintances, potential romantic partners, the consolations of pornography, and the panoply of corporations that satisfy our endless consumer desires.

We may also wonder if solitude and independence, once achieved, do us much good. In affluent, developed countries, loneliness has become so common that some have begun labeling our time as an "age of loneliness."

Loneliness can damage more than just one's mental health. According to a March 2015 paper published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, "substantial evidence now indicates that individuals lacking social connections (both objective and subjective social isolation) are at risk for premature mortality." The risks to human health associated with social isolation, the study claims, are comparable to those posed by obesity.

Combating loneliness requires not more social interactions, but better social interactions, or what we sometimes refer to as intimacy. Knowing we can depend on others for company, conversation, and aid in times of crisis makes us feel less alienated. We become part of a community, an island of solidarity and affection in a great ocean of human activity.

Mongolians may not have much privacy, but that doesn't mean they lack intimacy. It may well be that the Mongolian understanding of intimacy and affection are best placed in the context of constant, intense social interactions with a wide array of family members, friends, and acquaintances.

An American or European may envy the sense of community shared by Mongolians even as it challenges our modern thirst for privacy. Still, this encounter can be instructive. It can teach us what we actually desire in human interactions: building strong emotional bonds with a group of people while retaining opportunities for solitary contemplation.

Our empty rooms and solitary hours are dubious gifts. While they afford us the time and space to think, the question remains: think about what? When we are shut off from others with whom to share our experiences, our thoughts and impressions may wind up being little more than the reflections of our own eyes.

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blog
Harold Thibault

This Asian City Is Killing Its Locals With Coal

As winter descends on Mongolia's cold and polluted capital of Ulaanbaatar, toxic coal heating is turning on everywhere. An estimated one resident in 10 dies from the effects of pollution.

ULAANBAATAR — Winter is already falling on Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, and the sight of the greyish smoke rising from yurts in the suburbs of the coldest capital city on Earth is enough to worry 29-year-old Bolormaa Oyunbileg.

“As soon as the hard season begins, things become terrible,” she complains. “Often, we can’t even see the cars at the end of the street anymore.”

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Mongolia
Song Fulee

When Nomads Settle The City: The Urbanization Of Mongolia

ULAN BATOR – Over the last decade, Mongols have rapidly begun to concentrate here in its capital, as well as other cities.

This trend is accelerating and making Ulan Bator an unbearably crowded place, though still relatively small in comparison with most of China’s major cities. Nevertheless, the impact may be more drastic on a nation historically made of nomadic people.

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