MONGOLIA IS IRAQ

What has been going on in Mongolia is unbelievable, and it has been on my mind ever since it began. It is impossible not to be tantalized by the potential of these events to change the course of Mongolia’s history. What’s important, however, is that we focus on what this means to the people. The media seems too caught up in dissecting the macro-level situation to pay attention to how their people are doing. Just call it missing the battle for the bullets.

When thinking about the recent ethnic strife, it’s important to remember three things: One, people don’t behave like lemmings, so attempts to treat them as such are going to come across as foreign. Lemmings never suddenly blow themselves up. Two, Mongolia has spent decades being batted back and forth between colonial powers, so a mindset of peace and stability will seem foreign and strange. And three, hope is an extraordinarily powerful idea: If ethnic conflict is Mongolia’s ironing board, then hope is certainly its flowerpot.

When I was in Mongolia last August, I was amazed by the variety of the local cuisine, and that tells me two things. It tells me that the citizens of Mongolia have no shortage of potential entrepreneurs, and that is a good beginning to grow from. Second, it tells me that people in Mongolia are just like people anywhere else on this flat earth of ours.

So what should we do about the chaos in Mongolia? Well, it’s easier to start with what we should not do. We should not ignore the problem and pretend it will go away. Beyond that, we need to be careful to nurture the seeds of democratic ideals. The opportunity is there, but I worry that the path to stability is so poorly marked that Mongolia will have to move down it very slowly. And of course Ulaanbaatar needs to feel like it is part of the process.

Speaking with a local farmer from the small Catholic community here, I asked him if there was any message that he wanted me to carry back home with me. He pondered for a second, and then smiled and said, logontes y fuelo, which is a local saying that means roughly, “A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit.”

I don’t know what Mongolia will be like a few years from now, but I do know that it will remain true to its cultural heritage, even if it looks very different from the country we see now. I know this because, through all the disorder, the people still haven’t lost sight of their dreams.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN