A mountain muses on why things must change in the Gobi, and why they don’t

I, a crumbled Gobi mountain, have watched over Lol, the local community, for so long that I feel I have a stake in its welfare. That is why I am so worried and agitated when I see how my local people barely manage their livelihood these days. Right now, Lol is at peace. Every household has stocked up on flour and rice and have also got little bits of all the other things they would need until October. For that is when they will again have access to anything they have to buy. Their gateway to trade is open for twenty days every quarter, and that is all the time my people have to buy and sell, to do deals that will keep them going for the next three months at least.

Today is the 20th of July. Gashuun Sukhait port was open for 20 days and is now closed. I smiled as I watched all the tricks the locals used during this period of trade. Why do all Chinese border and customs officials seem to have a high pitched voice? They issue snappy commands in broken Mongolian asking people to stand in a row, to show some semblance of order. Mongolians push forward as their mind does not understand queues and regulations.

You cannot imagine what things I have seen as I have sat here, firm and lonely, an old and dark mountain. The time when there were only wild horses and antelopes here is gone for ever. Things have been changing rapidly in the last few years in this wild and vast Gobi land. You see the many green bottles with white labels scattered all around here? These are called bottles of beer and are produced in the southern land. They are piled up in mounds. Cashmere and wool go south during the trading days and come back as household goods, mainly staple items of food.

Locals try their best to make as much money as they can in this brief period. Hairs of mostly white goat are spun as thread, knitted as human hair and then stuffed wherever possible to be smuggled to the south. People will wrap their whole body with them and cars are almost totally taken apart and re-assembled after concealing the cashmere in every hollow and empty space. For some time, goat skin was very expensive in the south. So people crossed over wearing goat skin next to their own skin. Tall and people were in great demand as more goat skin could be wrapped around their frame. Happiness was measured in terms of the number of goat skins one had taped around oneself as one went south.

Bayannuur province of Inner Mongolia neighbours Gashuun Sukhait. Until recently, Gants Mod port there was a village. This Chinese port also opens for trade for twenty days every quarter. The locals drag their cashmere and hides bringing much joy to the Chinese traders of Gants Mod and return with the goods of their need, somewhat like ants. This is also international trade, but following its own imperatives, norms and agenda.

I watch how people work in four Mongolian organizations – the Customs office, the Foreign Citizens’ Department, the Army and the Inspection Departments. They are hard working and sincere, cleverly coordinating demands and requirements. They are all the more impressive in their work as they are ultimately on their own at Lol. I would say this is the most important thing about them that they are on their own, living and working in a remote outpost. Watching them tackle daily challenges at work, I purse my brows and feel sad at how the state and the administration have abandoned their remote settlements.

Sssh…I hear loud singing in a familiar voice. A man from Tsogt Tsetsii soum is driving a car and singing “This land brings great joy and peace from my ancestors to my heart …” Maybe, he is a fan of Banzragch. He also has a good voice. They talk a lot about the endless expanse of the Gobi. I have never stirred anywhere and can only imagine what a true pleasure it must be to gallop without knowing where the horse and I are going. Our man is driving fast from Dalanzadgad to Gashuun Sukhait 300 km away. A brown Nissan jeep seems to never get any closer to the destination, no matter how high you put the gear and how is the dust trail behind it.

People say it does not rain in the Gobi. That is not true. It rains often, with drops like the eyes of a camel coming down to calm the land. But the clouds are stingy and also fickle, allowing the wind to move them away. The land becomes soft and the air turns cooler after receiving a couple of wet drops. The burning heat is gone. There is more traffic and an air of busy-ness. The brown Nissan jeep is now one among many old-model Russian jeeps and vans.

Gadgets need power to run them

There are countless whispers that are blown into my old brown sides so I eavesdrop, even without intention, on myriad snatches of life. Children’s innocent comments, adults talking about the burdens of life – all tell a tale. Even if there is no conversation, I look at the goods they carry and can guess much. Those who bring TV sets and other electronic gadgets from Gants Mod look proud when they talk. They have a right to, for the successful purchase is the culmination of at least three months’ preparation and planning. It is as much pride of ownership as making a profit in business.

After the TV is installed, however, there will be mild curses every time there is a power outage. There are many soums in the Gobi where electricity supply is restricted. The settlements are right on the edge of enormous deposits of coking and brown coal but the Gobi population lives in electricity scarcity. There are many such ironies about life here.

These days there is an expectancy in the air that is hard to miss. Truth to say it seems to blow from the Chinese side. Just a year ago Gants Mod on the border was a small village but it has been transformed beyond recognition. The mantra is infrastructure, and more infrastructure.

The Chinese have built a highway connecting Gants Mod to the wider world of commerce and industry. There are marked areas for Customs inspection of coal from Mongolia. Cameras have been installed at frequent intervals and there is a area to load and unload coal. There is a laboratory as part of the Customs inspection process and the staff have access to proper working and living facilities.
Those who come for the first time cannot visualize the village which the Chinese, working very hard like ants, have turned into a medium-size city with all modern infrastructure. A 12-metre high green wall will keep the wind from following the coal from Mongolia when that is unloaded for customs inspection. This is to prevent coal dust from rising. Monster 80- or 90-ton trucks stand in a queue, hungry to “devour” the coal once it starts arriving from Mongolia. Cameras in the customs area will monitor their movement. This is how the Chinese are preparing for the future, just a few steps away from us. In the hundreds of years that my eyes have scoured the Gobi I have never seen such activity as I see now.

Just across the border one country gets ready for the brave new world of the future, and I desperately try to figure out why things continue to be so different in Mongolia, where herdsmen still wrap themselves in cashmere to sell it across the border so that they can bring in some flour and rice. I am an old and wrinkled mountain but even I know the difference lies in two words: Stimulus Package. Do you think my immobility keeps me from knowing about the worldwide crisis which hit everybody last fall?

I keep track of the world’s joys and woes from what I get to hear of conversations in cars. That’s how I know that China is spending USD585 billion on a stimulus package to combat the crisis. The state-owned banks in China keep releasing funds to pay for infrastructure projects. Many Chinese find jobs in these road and other infrastructure projects under way. My children in Mongolia, beyond the border, everything is run under certain clearly formulated long-term policies. Do you not know that the Chinese state-owned railway and Shenhua railway are jointly building a railway in the direction of Tavan Tolgoi? Is there any similar effort on the Mongolian side to develop ports or towns at the border? I am an old mountain, and my experience has been that equal partnership is possible only when there is equal development, or almost nearly so. Otherwise, it is very easy to end up inside a monster.  

Recently, Shivee Khuren has become a permanent international port. The freight Shivee Khuren handles at present is less than what passes through Gashuun Sukhait, and there are also no large settlements nearby. My guess is that Nariin Sukhait-Shivee Khuren becoming a permanent port has something to do with the interests of the southern neighbour. Most countries have a comprehensive long-term vision of where they wish to be in the future and make detailed plans of how to get there in phases. However, my homeland prefers to stay stuck in one place, with no movement or progress. Our policy seems to be to have no policy, and to live from day to day. All that we have achieved from a peaceful existence has been a pitiful experience.

Local administrations will always lack a national vision

Vehicles move like dots on the steppe. The dust trails can be seen for long distance. I am again reminded of the stimulus package. Without a proper road, there is no way to facilitate the development of the deposits, availability of services and setting up of the product cycle. The distance between Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit and Gashuun Sukhait is 247 km. Almost 500 trucks transport coal on the road daily. They are not the trucks one commonly sees, but are specialised monsters weighing around 100 tons with their load of coal.

This has been going on for five years now, ever since coal began to be mined at the small blocks of 4&8 in Tavan Tolgoi. Nobody has thought of building a paved road to keep down the dust. There has been a lot of shouting about ecological damage and its negative impact on local people’s health but nothing at all has been done to make things better.

Local administrations think locally and it is understandable that any measures they take will have only local application. Also the local budgets have no allocation to build 247 km of good quality paved roads. It is also understandable that local administrators will try to transport as much coal as possible from Tavan Tolgoi to China to earn more money for the local budget. Unless the mind and the purse of the state reach the remote provinces, the provinces will not see any change in their condition. The concern of the state is shown from time to time when two inspection cars come and shut down the mines in the name of fighting dust; after a week, the 100-ton monsters move as before, raising the same amount of dust. Nothing changes here.

I don’t think Mongolia stands a chance of getting rich and standing high next to the neighbour without extensive and inclusive development of local communities. The places where the strategic deposits are, where the infrastructure will be laid and where the ports will come up to permit transportation of products – these deserve intensive development. My heart breaks when I see the disastrous consequences of prolonged state apathy towards the local people and their needs.

Khanbogd soum has 3,100 residents and 90 jeeps. Where is the improvement that the market economy is supposed to have brought to ordinary people’s lives? Maybe you have heard about the new Gobi “richies”, who made money by getting gold from the Suuj mountain. The mountain in Khatanbulag soum was a fabled storehouse of gold. You washed one cubic metre of earth there and came up with 45 grams of gold. Clever local people did just that and within two years, one soum had 90 jeeps and 56 shops in a row. But is this model of development desirable or sustainable? Is it even natural? Not so long after some people got rich, state inspection officers are busy detoxifying the soil filled with cyanide. I hear whispers that more gold has been struck there and the whole cycle is beginning anew. The Gobi beckons those who wish to become rich at any cost while the local people see their misery grow.

This reporter has not tasted the Gobi harmag and I heard her say when she came out of the local driver’s jeep – the man who was singing – that she wished she had a jar to collect some of that edible plant. She seems to think that she can pluck them as one plucks berries in the Khangai region. These journalists who know nothing about life here come for a quick visit to the Gobi and write loud columns about this or that problem that the Gobi has. They can’t explain the nature of the problem with any insight or real understanding but are quick to fault the state for not having inspection teams to ensure that trucks loaded with coal do not raise skyscrapers of dust.

Around 100 families live near the 247-km route along which the coal is transported. This year, there was not much rain and, therefore, many herders settled in the nearby Khurmen soum. It seems practical to do a few things, such as evacuating these few families from the truck route, settle them at some winter spots, dig wells for them and build paved roads. Some small programs on the ground may address the problem more effectively than a chorus against the great dust cloud in the air.

Who will blame whom?

Are you asking about the responsibility of the coal transportation companies? If 51% of the Tavan Tolgoi LLC is owned by the local authority, who will blame whom for neglect? Accountability should begin at home but the interests of the province budget cannot be undermined. The mines and the way the whole business works generate taxes and so cannot be disturbed too much or too often, let alone be closed down. There is no way the pressing problems of Umnugobi can or will be solved by the local administration.

There is a potent conflict of interest. The royalty the mining companies pay sustains the province budget. The State gets 70% of it while the aimag gets 20% and the soum 10%. However, there are fixed limits to how much the soum and the aimag can collect; anything above that goes to the state budget. Thus the local administration never has the financial independence and authority to take up local projects like transforming the somnolent port into a bustling centre. The clouds of dust hide more and ger problems, and only a holistic attitude will be useful in the vast Gobi land.
 
There is no legal environment for private companies to build roads. The only relevant provision allows reimbursement from the state budget for expenses on road and electricity line construction, but until recently, the reimbursement process held little incentive for any construction company. The yearly refund would be 30% of costs in the first two years after completion of the work, and the remaining 40% would come after the third year.

This long period when the money was blocked saw several road construction companies going bankrupt. They received their loans in MNT but bought their material in USD. The MNT fell and their costs rose. No wonder there was no taker for the bid to build a paved road to Zammin-Uud. The Government has recently realized that the reimbursement method was not “practical”. Now things have been made easier for the construction companies, by allowing 50% reimbursement at the completion of 70% of the total project, and the rest when the project is completed. That is how the “notorious” resolution No. 47 of Parliament has been softened.

It seems people have only now begun to look at the essence of the issue after allowing their eyes to be covered for five years with the ecological curtain of the dust damage. The amended reimbursement practices should be implemented as soon as possible to facilitate the launch of mega infrastructure projects according to international standards. If there is a dearth of capable and reliable Mongolian investors Chinese companies are willing to do the work under the amended conditions once they be come effective. They could be asked to hire several Mongolian subcontractors.

But this is not to say that we should look to our southern neighbour for help on anything that the local administration cannot handle. The local community didn’t like it when the first group of Chinese mining workers entered Mongolia in 2004 under an agreement with the Umnugobi administration and the fears have only grown. Vehicles with Mongolian plates and Chinese drivers drive freely on 247 km in our land, while it continues to be very difficult to enter China from Mongolia in vehicles small or large. Isn’t a review of the transport agreement between the two countries called for? I have heard that M. Enkhbold, when he was Prime Minister, said something about this and I wonder what happened.

Many of you look at me and take pictures of what you take to be a magnificent relic. You do not know that under that inert visage is a mind that constantly contemplates on how things can be made better for the people of Lol and similar communities. I know what should be done but will you follow the path I chart? I can only try and show you the way.

You should amend the laws on mineral resources, on the budget, on budget administration and funding. MPs should pass the draft law on reimbursement as quickly as possible. As the port gains in significance living conditions for the Customs employees have to improve from the present three in a small room. Local people may very well refuse to move from where they are, even when the dust covers them every day, unless they receive compensation and a guarantee of alternative livelihood. There should be a comprehensive state policy for outlying provinces which have missed out on most things in Ulaanbaatar and neighbouring areas.

If you happen to pass this way, please have a look at the local crumbled mountain. My testimony can be heard in the wind.