The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) announced today the launch of its five-year (2023-2028) Mongolia Strategic Framework that will guide the agency’s work. The strategy focuses on supporting Mongolia’s efforts to strengthen democratic institutions, enhance national sovereignty, and diversify its economy.

In partnership with the Government of Mongolia, civil society, and the private sector, USAID will build on past progress to strengthen democratic systems, unlock private enterprise-led economic growth, reform the energy sector, and improve resilience to climate change.

“As Mongolia’s long-standing partner and third neighbor, the United States remains committed to help strengthen Mongolia’s democracy and enhance its economic vitality,” said USAID Mission Director Ryan Washburn. “The U.S. government, through USAID, will continue strengthening our partnerships to advance our shared goal of sustainable development for all Mongolians.”

For more than 30 years, USAID assistance has spanned a variety of priority areas, including developing the energy sector, helping to establish and strengthen major banking institutions, providing humanitarian assistance, promoting small businesses and diversifying income in rural areas, and spurring inclusive participation in the democratic process. The United States also provided more than 24.8 billion MNT ($8 million) to help Mongolia respond to COVID-19.

To learn more about the Agency’s five-year Strategic Framework for Mongolia, visit www.usaid.gov/mongolia.

Mongolia has substantial coal deposits across the country. Coal is an important source of government revenue alongside mineral exports from mega mines such as Oyu Tolgoi and the Erdenet copper mine. But in September 2022, a coal scandal began to unfold in Mongolia’s capital city of Ulaanbaatar.

Multiple disclosures were made regarding corruption and conflicts of interest associated with the state-owned coal company, Erdenes-Tavan Tolgoi JSC. Then in October 2022, the Mongolian government revealed that coal was being illegally transported across the Chinese border without customs registration. This coal smuggling was allegedly directed by individuals in high-level government positions. Mongolia’s new national opposition political party, the HUN Party, calculated that the total loss of potential revenue to the Mongolian government was equivalent to an estimated 40 trillion Mongolian tugrik (US$13 billion). The Mongolian government did not officially confirm this figure.

Coal executives involved in such deals directly implicated the governing Mongolian People’s Party (MPP) because Erdenes-Tavan Tolgoi JSC is state owned. According to Mongolian news media revelations in December 2022, Erdenes-Tavan Tolgoi JSC executives secretly signed multiple offtake contracts (largely with Chinese and Mongolian companies) to fund infrastructure projects in exchange for cheap coal. These projects included the Zag water pipeline, the Bogd Khan railway and Tavantolgoi Gashuun Sukhait road projects.

Erdenes-Tavan Tolgoi JSC’s chief executive officer was eventually arrested and imprisoned. Mongolia’s government installed a special representative to replace him. On 30 March 2023, two members of parliament — Tumurbaatar Ayursaikhan and Dashdemberal Bat-Erdene — lost their positions. Several Chinese officials associated with the coal trade were also arrested in China at the end of 2022.

This revelation of secret, internal deal-making within the state-owned company triggered large-scale protests in Ulaanbaatar. Yet these protests were directed not only at this scandal but embodied a larger anger at political dysfunction and endemic corruption in Mongolia. During the protests, many different opinions were broadcasted, including calls for the government to resign. Protesters also promised that this would be the first of further protests planned for when the intense winter cold thawed.

This scandal was seen as an example of so-called ‘theft-by-law’ because state secrets rules technically protect internal deal-making and it is within the power of the ruling party’s decision makers. The scandal’s information source remains unclear — no single whistleblower has come forward, though several copies of the offtake agreements have been shared publicly.

The initial spotlight on the smuggling came from within MPP. Given the nature of Mongolian politics over the last decade, this situation is an indication of party fracturing and an internal fight for financial resources.

With the next election coming in June 2024, internal party fighting may have culminated in Prime Minister Luvsannamsrain Oyun-Erdene’s effort to exert his control over the MPP and use the scandal to display an anti-corruption stance. This was evident in Prime Minister Oyun-Erdene’s speech at the Plenary Session of Mongolia’s parliament on 15 December 2022 when he stated his rejection of the ‘MANAN gang’. MANAN refers to MAN — the MPP, and AN — the Democratic Party — combined to construct the Mongolian word for ‘fog’.

As Gantulga Munkherdene has argued in his analysis of ‘wild capitalism’ in Mongolia, MANAN has come to embody public perceptions of the fusing of Mongolian party politics with jockeying for control of the nation’s wealth. It has been in circulation to contest corruption since the mid-2000s.

The coal smuggling is not an isolated event. Powerful political figures are closely intertwined with large-scale business interests. The culture of corruption within the Mongolian state has existed over at least three decades, which closely tracks with the Mongolian mining boom starting in the early 2000s.

Politicians’ use of public funds for personal gain and the cultivation of financial and social privileges has a long history in Mongolia. A 2005 USAID report on corruption highlighted ‘a profound blurring of the lines between the public and private sector brought about by endemic and systemic conflict of interest at nearly all levels’.

Corruption scandals have plagued Mongolia. The Mongolian government unfairly awarded scholarships to relatives or children of politicians and a state-run health and social insurance fund was subject to high levels of corruption and theft of assets. The Development Bank of Mongolia’s famous Chinggis and Samurai bond money was gutted by government authorities and their family members and major Mongolian private companies with political connections. The state fund for small and medium enterprises also gave large loans to members of the MPP — often without them paying them back.

The coal smuggling scandal is another example of the culture of corruption in a long line of similar events. But it is unclear why the Mongolian government only uncovered this so-called open secret of coal smuggling within its own party now.

Coal smuggling has been on the radar since at least 2018 when former member of Mongolia’s parliament from Omnogobi province, Luvsang Enkhbold, warned about millions of tonnes of coal missing in customs declaration forms. Beyond pointing to internal fighting for power within the MPP, the scandal may serve as a convenient crisis to make the prime minister look good in anticipation of the elections in 2024. The scandal could distract the Mongolian population from bigger protests calling for genuine reform.

BY:

Gantulga Munkherdene is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, National University of Mongolia.

Ariell Ahearn is Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Oxford.

The Xiongnu, contemporaries of Rome and Egypt, established their nomadic empire on the Mongolian steppe 2,000 years ago, emerging as Imperial China’s most formidable adversary and inspiring the construction of China’s Great Wall.

According to a new study, the Xiongnu were a multiethnic empire with high genetic diversity throughout the empire and within individual extended elite families. Women held the highest positions of power on the outskirts of the empire. The highest genetic diversity was found among low-status male servants, providing clues to the process of empire-building that gave rise to Asia’s first nomadic imperial power.

The world’s first nomadic empire, the Xiongnu empire, is finally being revealed thanks to archaeological excavations and new ancient DNA evidence. The Xiongnu empire arose on the Mongolian steppe 1,500 years before the Mongols. It became one of Iron Age Asia’s most powerful political forces, eventually stretching its reach and influence from Egypt to Rome to Imperial China.

The Xiongnu were famously nomadic and built their empire on the backs of horses. Their economy was based on animal husbandry and dairying. Their skill at mounted warfare made them swift and formidable adversaries, and their legendary conflicts with Imperial China eventually led to the construction of the Great Wall.

Juhyeon Lee, the first author of the study and Ph.D. student at Seoul National University, said, “We wanted to know how much genetic diversity was structured at different social and political scales, as well as in relation to power, wealth, and gender. We knew that the Xiongnu had a high degree of genetic diversity. However, due to a lack of community-scale genomic data, it remained unclear whether this diversity emerged from a heterogeneous patchwork of locally homogenous communities or whether local communities were genetically diverse.”

They discovered that the Xiongnu had a high level of genetic diversity. However, it was found that individuals in the two cemeteries displayed extremely high genetic diversity, comparable to that found throughout the Xiongnu Empire. This was revealed by the excavation of the Xiongnu Elite Tomb 64, which contained a high-status aristocratic woman at the site of Takhiltiin Khotgor, Mongolian Altai.

However, a lot of this variation was divided according to social class. The lowest rank individuals displayed the greatest genetic variation and diversity, indicating that they came from remote regions of the Xiongnu Empire or elsewhere.

Elite status and power may have been concentrated among particular genetic subsets of the larger Xiongnu population, as suggested by the lower overall genetic diversity and higher proportions of eastern Eurasian ancestries found in local and aristocratic elites interred in square tombs and stone ring graves. Particularly in Shombuuzyn Belchir, even wealthy families have exploited marriage to fortify ties to recently incorporated communities. We now have a clearer understanding of how the Xiongnu grew their empire by integrating many groups and utilizing marriage and concubinage.

Researchers discovered that high-status Xiongnu burials and elite grave goods were disproportionately associated with women, correlating with textual and archaeological evidence that Xiongnu women played particularly prominent political roles in the expansion and integration of new territories along the empire’s frontier.

They also discovered that the elite monumental tombs at Takhiltyn Khotgor were built for women, with each prominent woman flanked by a slew of commoner males buried in simple graves. The women were buried in elaborate coffins emblazoned with the golden sun and moon emblems of Xiongnu imperial power. One tomb even housed a team of six horses and a partial chariot.

Women occupied the wealthiest and most elaborate graves at the nearby Shombuuzyn Belchir elite cemetery. The grave goods included wooden coffins, golden emblems and gilded objects, glass and faience beads, Chinese mirrors, a bronze cauldron, silk clothing, wooden carts, more than a dozen livestock, as well as three items typically associated with male horse-mounted warriors.

Bryan Miller, project archaeologist and Assistant Professor of Central Asian Art & Archaeology at the University of Michigan, said, “Women held great power as agents of the Xiongnu imperial state along the frontier, often holding exclusive noble ranks, maintaining Xiongnu traditions, and engaging in both steppe power politics and the so-called Silk Road networks of exchange.”

Genetic analysis also provided rare insights into the social roles of children in Xiongnu society.

Senior author Christina Warinner, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University and Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology said, “Children received differential mortuary treatment depending upon age and sex, giving clues to the ages at which gender and status were ascribed in Xiongnu society.”

They found that while younger boys were not, teenage Xiongnu males as young as eleven to twelve were buried with a bow and arrows. This shows that males were only assigned the gendered social responsibilities of hunter and warrior in late childhood or early adolescence.

Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, project archaeologist and Mongolian Archaeology Project: Surveying the Steppes project coordinator at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology, said, “Our results confirm the long-standing nomadic tradition of elite princesses playing critical roles in the political and economic life of the empires, especially in periphery regions – a tradition that began with the Xiongnu and continued more than a thousand years later under the Mongol Empire While history has at times dismissed nomadic empires as fragile and short, their strong traditions have never been broken.”

Journal Reference:

Juhyeon Lee, Bryan K. Miller, Jamsranjav Bayarsaikhan, etal.Genetic population structure of the Xiongnu Empire at imperial and local scales. Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf3904

Thousands of education workers answered the call of the Federation of Mongolian Education and Science Unions (FMESU) and peacefully demonstrated on April 6th in Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar to demand increased salaries for teachers and education support personnel.

More than 5,000 FMESU members from preschool to secondary school, from scientific institutions to vocational education facilities, and universities gathered at the Sukhbaatar Square to demand fair and better implementation of the collective agreement on the salary increase agreed in 2022.

Education International (EI) member organisation in Mongolia FMESU submitted a threefold demand to the Parliament, to the Ministry of Education and Science, to the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and to the Ministry of Finance:

Implement Article 2.1 of the collective agreement and increase the basic salary of employees in the education and science sector by at least 50 percent from April 1st, 2023.

Change the classifications and ranks of positions, increase the rates and number of allowances and additional wages by considering the specificities of positions and working conditions of the employees of the education and scientific sectors.

Implement Clause 2.3.14 of the Government's 2020-2024 Action Programme and provide State-owned universities with fixed expenses.

FMESU requested that the government respond to the demands by April 10th, 2023, and announced that they were ready to go on strike until the demands are met.

According to the governmental resolution 488 regarding the update of the salary range and minimum range of specific civil officers, education support personnel salary is only increased by 15,000 Mongolian Tugrik (5 USD), the public authorities said.

The Government insisted that, according to its Resolution 491 on the additional salary of the public administration employees and the increase in the length of service of the public service employees, the education workers’ pay is linked to the number of years in service. However, this salary increase is not applicable to teachers with more than 25 years of teaching.

FMESU criticised the fact that this decision had been made solely by the Government without consultation with the Confederation of Mongolian Trade Unions (CMTU), which represents one of the parties to the tripartite agreement of the social council.

The union also deplored that the rising cost of commodities, inflation, big class sizes, increasing workload, and shortage of education personnel, mean that the current salaries that teachers and education support personnel receive are deeply insufficient. It also recalled that the basic minimum salary for ESP in Mongolia is of 565,000 Mongolian Tugrik equivalent (161 USD)/month as of January 2023.

EI campaign “Go Public! Fund Education”

FMESU is joining the Education International (EI) recently launched “Go Public! Fund Education” campaign, an urgent call for governments to invest in public education, a fundamental human right and public good, and to invest more in teachers, the single most important factor in achieving quality education.

EI brings its full supports FMESU and education workers of Mongolia in demanding better salaries and working conditions.

We urge the government of Mongolia to respect the collective agreement signed with FMESU, stressed EI General Secretary David Edwards.

Deploring that teachers are overworked and overburdened and many of our colleagues are leaving the professions as a result, he, adding: “Teachers stood behind governments and their students during the pandemic and ensured that teaching and learning continued. It is high time governments acknowledge and guarantee that the teachers and education support personnel have decent working conditions, decent and fair wages, as well as adequate professional support and development.”

Mongolia's National Agency for Meteorology and Environmental Monitoring on Monday issued a warning of strong winds and dust storms.

"Starting from tomorrow afternoon, strong winds and dust storms are expected to hit the western part of Mongolia," and continue to affect large parts of the country in the coming days, the weather monitoring agency said.

The agency asked the public, especially nomadic herders and drivers, to take extra precautions against possible disasters.

Mongolia has a harsh continental climate as strong winds, snow and dust storms are common during the spring.

“Ulaanbaatar 2023” East Asian Youth Games will be organized from August 16 to August 23. Currently, out of the nine countries in East Asia, Mongolia, South Korea, Japan, Macao, and Taiwan have stated their commitment to participate in the Youth Games. Over one thousand athletes and 430 guests are expected to visit Mongolia.

At the Capital City Governor’s Council Meeting, Z. Tumurtumuu, the Deputy Governor in charge of social issues, green development, and air and environmental pollution, presented the preparatory works for the upcoming Games. The organizing committee has signed cooperation agreements with eight out of the nine facilities to host the tournaments.

For the safety of all athletes, each competition will be staffed by a medical team to provide first aid. Community doctors will be also on hand to provide medical care to spectators, and an emergency medical team will be stationed outside each facility to be ready for any medical emergency.

In compliance with the Anti-Doping Rule, 200-250 athletes’ samples will be collected, with 106 observers monitoring the process. The selection process is underway from 2650 domestic volunteers and 157 foreign volunteers who have submitted their candidature. The organizing committee emphasized that the East Asian Youth Games is a widely recognized continental multi-sport event, and since the participants are all under 18 years of age, ensuring their safety is of utmost importance and requires special attention.

The Governor of the Capital City and Mayor of Ulaanbaatar D. Sumiyabazar stressed the importance of paying exigent attention to organizing the Games successfully as the Games would present the entire country and serve as a strong impetus to attract tourists to our country, promoting Mongolia abroad.

The Opening Ceremony of the East Asian Youth Games will be held at the National Sports Stadium, while the Closing Ceremony will take place at Sukhbaatar Square, Ulaanbaatar,

Melbourne has overtaken Sydney as Australia's most populous city for the first time since the 19th Century gold rush, following a boundary change.

Sydney has proudly held the title for more than 100 years.

But with populations rapidly growing on Melbourne's fringe, the city limits have been expanded to include the area of Melton.

The latest government figures, from June 2021, put Melbourne's population at 4,875,400 - 18,700 more than Sydney.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) defines a city's "significant urban area", by including all connecting suburbs with more than 10,000 people.

"With the amalgamation of Melton into Melbourne in the latest... classification, Melbourne has more people than Sydney - and has had since 2018, " the ABS's Andrew Howe told the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper - which described the redrawn boundary as "a technicality".

Proud Sydneysiders will point to the ABS's conclusion that when looking at the greater Sydney and Melbourne regions, Sydney remained bigger in June 2021.

Greater regions of a city take into account its "functional area", the ABS says, and include populations who frequent or work within the city, but may live in small towns and rural areas surrounding it.

Census reveals how Australia is changing

However the federal government predicts Greater Melbourne will overtake Greater Sydney in 2031-32.

Melbourne's rapid growth is largely thanks to international migration, Australian National University demographer Liz Allen told the BBC.

Dr Allen noted that unlike Sydney, which has a "historical hangover" of a time when "it didn't want to be seen as anything other than white", Melbourne has a reputation for celebrating diversity.

It is also an attractive migration destination as it has employment and education opportunities comparableto Sydney, but has historically been more affordable than the harbour-side city.

It's not the first time Melbourne has held the title of Australia's biggest city.

As a result of the gold rush in the late 19th Century, which saw migrants flock to the state of the Victoria, Melbourne grew rapidly and outnumbered Sydney until 1905.

The Chinese media expressed their displeasure at the expression of ‘China’s yellow dust’ being used worldwide.

According to the Global Times, a state-run media outlet in China on the 16th, the Central Meteorological Observatory of China said, “The two strongest yellow dust storms this year occurred in Mongolia, more than 600 km away from Beijing, the capital.”

He expressed his displeasure, saying, “Some Korean media reported that the yellow dust from Mongolia was ‘the yellow dust from China’, and even used inflammatory terms such as disaster or hell.” It is argued that the source of the yellow dust is Mongolia, not China, and that China, like Korea and Japan, is a ‘victim’.

The Global Times also expressed discomfort, saying, “Some media outlets in Korea and Japan reported that ‘yellow dust from China’ spread to their countries and affected people’s lives.” In particular, he insisted that this is not the first time that South Korea has shifted responsibility for weather problems.

However, the media actually mentioned only two cases of yellow dust that occurred in Mongolia this year. In addition to the Gobi Desert located on the border between Mongolia and China, the main sources of yellow dust that affected Korea and Japan this spring are analyzed to be the southern part of Xinjiang in China and the central western part of Inner Mongolia.

Justice Minister Khishgeegiin Nyambaatar outlines plan to uproot endemic corruption in resource-rich but still impoverished nation.

Mongolia has vowed to resolve its deep-rooted corruption problems, a response to the thousands of angry protestors who tried to storm the parliament last December while calling for an investigation into a US$1.8 billion coal theft case.

The Mongolian Independent Authority Against Corruption (IAAC), an independent government body, announced on April 12 that it had unveiled a national strategy to combat corruption in the public sector and set 10 related goals to achieve by 2030.

The mineral-rich nation will seek help if needed from China, which accounts for more than 80% of its total exports, for information about officials or company executives who may have absconded.

“This coal theft case is a very big case, involving more than 200 people,” Khishgeegiin Nyambaatar, Mongolia’s Minister of Justice and Internal Affairs, told Asia Times in an exclusive interview. Those suspected range “from members of the parliament and officials of the customs and tax authority to transportation and mining company executives,” he said.

“Our prosecution officers contacted their Chinese counterparts, who have expressed their willingness to cooperate in this case,” he said. “It will take some time to sort everything out but I want to emphasize that anyone who is involved in this case will be held accountable at the end of the day.”

He added that the Chinese side remains open to providing information on specific cases but not on broader cases.

“As a friendly neighbor, China believes the Mongolian government will properly probe and handle the case,” Mao Ning, a spokesperson of China’s foreign ministry, said back on December 6. “If Mongolia makes a request, the relevant authorities in China will provide necessary assistance in accordance with relevant laws and regulations.”

Dirty coal lies

Last November, the anti-corruption authority announced that more than 30 officials and executives of Erdenes-Tavantolgoi JSC, Mongolia’s largest state-owned coal miner, were under investigation for embezzlement.

Dorjhand Togmid, a parliamentarian in Mongolia, said at that time that a total of about 6.4 million tons of coal, worth US$1.8 billion, had not been registered by Mongolian customs since 2013 but had been recorded by Chinese customs. Whistleblowers said corrupt customs officials registered coal-loaded trucks as passenger vehicles.

Media reports said the Mongolian government had received a list of its corrupt officials from Beijing. In early December, thousands of protesters rallied in front of the Government Palace in Ulaanbaatar’s Sukhbaatar Square, calling on the government to disclose the list.

On December 8, Nyambaatar ordered the arrests of eight people, including Erdenes Tavantolgoi’s former Chief Executive Battulga Ganhuyag and his wife, sister and son-in-law.

On December 13, the IAAC disclosed the names of 17 suspects, including former Mongolian President Battulga Khaltmaa, two of his ex-staff, seven MPs, four Southgobi province lawmakers and former Erdenes Tavantolgoi directors.

“When Mongolia transitioned to a market economy in the 1990s, our GDP was about US$3 billion, and now it’s more than $12 billion, up by 300%,” Nyambaatar said. “But our poverty rate has not significantly improved while our education and health sectors have been deteriorating.”

“The general public is not very happy with what has evolved over the past 33 years,” he added. “A majority of Mongolians would agree that a lot of local businesses were close to the politicians, who opened doors and provided extra opportunities for themselves.”

He said the government will face a lot of resistance from the business sector as it bids to disrupt a system from which many companies have profited.

Last month, Nyambaatar froze the bank accounts of 18 people who had fled overseas during the anti-graft investigations. He said the government plans to repatriate more than 100 criminal suspects from 23 countries.

Poverty and corruption

According to the Household Socio-Economic Survey (HSES), Mongolia’s poverty rate was 27.8% in 2020, meaning that about 900,000 out of its 3.3 million people were living in poverty. The figure has hovered between 30-40% in the past decade, the data shows.

Last year, Mongolia scored 33 point out of 100 on the Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by Transparency International, a global corruption watchdog. The country scored 36 points a decade ago. The lower the score, the higher the corruption in a country’s public sector under TI’s rating.

By comparison, the United States scored 69 on the 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index while China scored 45. The US’s poverty rate was 12.8% last year while China’s was about 13% in 2020.

Along with Mongolia, the Philippines and Ukraine also scored 33 on the Corruption Perceptions Index. Last year, the three tied to rank 116th out of 180 countries in terms of clean governance.

“There is a strong urgency for us to change the situation as Mongolia’s Corruption Perceptions Index has not improved,” Nyambaatar said.

“There is public anger because some people in authority used public funds to send their kids to universities abroad,” he said. “A lot of properties in prime locations were acquired by those who had information that was not available to the public.”

As for who was on the receiving end of the mining licenses and subsidies, “a majority of them were people who had higher authority, or their alliances [did].”

He said the country’s widening wealth gap and shrinking middle class are giving impetus to the latest anti-corruption drive.

The IAAC’s newly-launched anti-corruption strategy includes five areas: whistleblowing, removal of corrupt public officials, extradition and repatriation of those under indictment, asset recovery and transparency.

“The strategy is an ambitious undertaking and is aimed at preventing the risk of corruption in public institutions, officials, private sector, civil society, political parties and groups,” said IAAC director general Dashdavaa Zandraa. “We will also work with the government for a more transparent, open and responsible society.”

Poor transparency, scarce information

Mongolia launched its Anti-Corruption Law in 2006 but it was poorly enforced due to a lack of transparency and access to information, an inadequate civil service system and weak government control of key institutions, according to the US State Department’s Office of Investment Affairs.

The Mongolian government has recently submitted three proposed laws for adoption in the parliamentary spring session, namely the protection of whistleblowers, campaign finance reform and the transparency of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

“With the campaign financing reform, we are trying to improve the political party’s finance systems,” Nyambaatar said, adding that parliament will start reforming its election system in May while increasing the number of its members.

“As long as there is a strong involvement of the government in the SOEs, there will be corruption and bribery,” he said. “Because of this, we are proposing a new SOE law to prohibit government’s involvement and an open and transparent recruitment process for those who are going to be leading those companies.”

Last year, the government submitted to parliament a mining transparency law, which aims to identify all beneficiaries in the supply chain through the use of information and communication technology.

By JEFF PAO