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There was never much of the Sensitive New Age Guy about Mongolia's founding father. Wrong age for a start – the twelfth century – and not a lot of time for sensitivity as you slaughtered and enslaved and torched your way across the top of the world.

But snag or no snag, surely even mean old Genghis Khan would quietly shed a tear for the state of his nation now.

His superpower is now just a shell of itself – a nation of nomads with nowhere to go. Emasculated by the Soviet Union and left behind by the rest of the world, even nature can be an enemy. Mongolia has been savaged by cruel winters.

Where does Mongolia take its place in the New Age? Maybe by returning to the strength of its past. Evan Williams and a lonely place out on its own.

Mongolian landscape/horsemen

Williams: On the vast plain of the Ikh Tamir Valley – herders gather for an age-old rite - until now banned by recent history.

00:00

Singing

Williams: Mongolia -- last refuge of the nomad -- a land where the human spirit still has room to roam free.

Bird flying

Singing: In the land of the wild, Mongolian horses will live for eternity. The Mongolian horse will bring man happiness and if you lose your horse you’ll never find that joy again.

00:36

Nara and tribesmen

Williams: With no food or water, Nara and his friends have ridden almost 200 kilometres for an event not held here in decades.

00:59

Nara

Nara: Tomorrow morning I will put my horses on the race track and we’ll see our power.

Horsemen

Williams: Like many Mongolians they live a life largely unchanged since their ancestors ruled the known world.

But these conquerors of history are also its victims.

After seventy years of Soviet subsidy - Mongolia’s struggling to find its place in the new free-market world.

01:19

Man lights pipe

And when winter comes, Mongolians -- like their country -- are finding themselves on their own.

01:42

Map

01:54

Music

Goat herder/Byamba on horseback

Williams: On a late spring afternoon Byamba Tseden herds his animals in from the wide Mongolian steppe.

A proud horseman and true nomad, Byamba moves his animals five times a year in search of the best grazing.

It's in these gentle warmer months he fattens his 300 sheep and goats to help them survive the coming winter.

02:12

BYAMBA: Could you take my photo, Jansil come here. We’ll get our photo taken.

02:34

Byamba's family

Williams: Every day Byamba’s wife and children share the burden of milking the herd - no matter how young - they all help - they have to.

Out here on the steppe there’s no electricity or shops, these animals supply everything they need -- some money for the cashmere, milk products and skins .

It’s a tough life that would test many - but after two years of drought - this year is tougher than most.

02:43

Byamba: Compared to last year, this summer is even worse. At that time we thought things weren’t good,

03:12

Byamba

but looking back, animals had at least some grass to gain weight.

Byamba's wife milking

Williams: A drought makes it hard for any herder - but here in Mongolia it can be critical.

If the animals can’t fatten up now - the steppe’s freezing winter can be fatal, not just for the herds - but the people who live off them.

03:33

Byamba

Byamba: Last winter was extremely cold. So cold… so cold that cows and goats were freezing to death at night, even in the shelter

03:50

Mongolian steppe

Music

04:00

Williams: But this was no ordinary winter.

When the chill Siberian winds swept down across the steppe, they brought with them a freezing death across much of Mongolia’s prime grazing land.

It’s called a Tzud - a deadly combination of drought followed by minus fifty degree temperatures, deep snow and 100 kilometre an hour blizzards.

Dear herd/Byamba

Byamba: There are many families who lost almost all their animals and have nothing. Many animals were lost in the storm and even if the herders wanted to search for them they had no money or fuel to do it.

04:37

Animal skull

Williams: Two million animals perished in the Tzud - ten percent of Mongolia’s entire stock. It might not sound that bad, but they were supporting half the nation’s herders on some of the best land.

05:00

Gardner

Super:

Douglas Gardner

U.N. Development Programme

Gardner: If you can imagine having your transportation disappearing, your savings disappearing, and your form of income, your food source -- everything disappearing. This is what's happened in the winter emergency of '99-2000.

05:15

Goat herd on road

Williams: Ten years ago Mongolia’s thirty-million sheep and goats were owned by the state and like other public assets - managed in collectives.

Privatisation has returned them to individual owners.

For some that’s been a ticket to large herds and relative wealth - but the Tzud was a chilling reminder that free market profits are yet to replace the safety net of old Soviet subsidies.

05:31

Plains

Byamba: Oh yes, they were taking care of us.

06:07

Byamba

We have had several natural disasters like this one. But before the arrival of the market economy there were collectives and all the animals were state-owned, so enough food and hay were distributed. Now this practice has stopped, only those with the money can afford to buy fodder. Poor families have no way.

06:14

Mongolian town

Williams: And it’s not just out on the steppe Mongolians are doing it tough.

In the decade since throwing off Russia’s communist yoke - Mongolia has rushed headlong down the road of free market reforms.

Like every nation in transition, there have been some winners, but unbridled privatisation, corruption and political chaos has caught many Mongolians unprepared and ill-equipped.

06:45

Gardner: There have been people that have benefited clearly and you’ve seen the growth of a middle class and creature comforts and that sort of thing. But you’ve also seen the emergence of poverty. Prior to 1990.

07:16

Gardner

the word poverty did not exist in the Mongolian language so it is considered a transition phenomena.

07:29

Factories

Williams: With little investment replacing Moscow’s former largesse, many factories have closed.

07:39

The city is now besieged by suburbs of the nomadic tent - the ger - filled with refugees from the provinces - where post-soviet privatisation is not just a phrase - but can be the difference between life and death.

Nara

Nara: The factories became non-state and the new owners retained only the most experienced ones. But nowadays even they don’t have work.

08:07

Nara in vegetable garden

Williams: Narantsetseg came to the city when new owners axed her job at a provincial carpet factory.

With a serious illness, a young baby, and no relatives in the city, she embodied Mongolia’s vulnerability to the harsh free-market realities.

08:22

Nara

Nara: After a month of treatment, my doctors said there was no hope and I was checked out of hospital. I had a stomach illness and pneumonia, which worsened things and I just couldn’t move.

08:39

Didi in children's home

Williams: Close to death, Narantsetseg brought her daughter Togserkh here – to what was then the only home for abandoned children.

08:58

Seven years ago Didi -- an Australian kindergarten teacher – set up the Lotus House - and has watched a society harden.

Didi: I’ve seen more of a divide in society. There has become sort of an elitist and there is a much bigger gap.

09:16

Didi

Super: Didi Ananda Kalika

Founder, The Lotus House

When I first got here the street kids were, you know, older kids. I didn’t notice many younger kids in the street. But you’ll see now the age has dropped a lot. In the winter it's very…

09:33

Williams: Among those in her care – a four year old – Arajana, abandoned on the streets of the city.

09:44

Didi: This little girl here, she was left in a ger for a few days and her legs were frozen. She almost died from that. She didn’t walk until she was almost three. She's four years – four and a half – she didn't walk til she was nearly three years.

Girl at home

Williams: These children are just a few of those being left behind -- and the number grows every day.

Gardner: There’s a challenge which is to move to the transition and carry out the reforms,

10:08

Gardner

while minimising the human impact of this -- the difficulties of nutrition or difficulties of not going to school, kids dropping out – while the economy moves to a new system -- getting the banking system up and running, looking for alternative sources for income generation beyond pure livestock. This is the challenge that Mongolia is facing – it's on all fronts -- economic, social and environmental – is to move through the phases of the transition as quickly as possible and trying to minimise the difficulties that the citizens are facing along the way.

10:20

Mongolian flag/government building

Williams: Reacting to the pain and corruption of the privatisation era Mongolians sought the certainty of the old soviet days.

FX: Applause

10:55

Enkbhayar

Williams: The result - Mongolians voted the former communists back in to power with a resounding majority.

And the new prime minister - old communist party numbers man Enkbhayar Nambar has promised to slow the pace of reform - to find a middle way.

Enkbhayar: So we would like to privatise, yes. But to privatise and to make

11:08

Enkbhayar

Super:

Enkhbayar Nambar

Prime Minister, Mongolia

these big enterprises work in a more efficient way, so that they will pay more taxes, sot that they will bring new technologies, so that they will increase jobs. So that they will make the Mongolian economy more export oriented.

11:32

Military parade

Band

11:53

Williams: But Mongolians are trying to free themselves from much more than economic dependence.

After decades of savage soviet suppression, they’re trying to recover their very identity

The town of Tsetserleg - some 500 kilometres from the capital - is leading the way.

Singer: He gave his body and soul for his country…

12:36

Williams: With a passionate ode, the town is now paying tribute to its most famous son -- Mongolia’s first defence minister, Marshal Demid.

1

Statue of Demid

Singer: He gave his body and soul for his country . He was the first hero general of our people - our Marshal Demid.

12:37

Williams: A popular potential leader, the Marshal was just one of tens of thousands of Mongolians slaughtered by the Russians as Stalin extended his iron grip over Moscow's most easterly possession.

Sergelan: For Europeans, I can explain it this way. He was like Christ –

12:57

Sergelan

Christians know how he died, what torture he had. The same feelings we have because he was killed and his wife was shot. She was pregnant. Relatives also were shot. So we shouldn’t forget this in the future.

13:14

Men pay homage to Demid at statue

Williams: Sergelen is one of Mongolia’s few free market winners, and poured some of his vodka company profits into paying for the statue.

By drawing on the heroes and strengths of their past, Mongolians hope to build confidence in their future.

13:44

Mongolian landscape

Music

FX: Horses

14:08

Horsemen

Williams: But it’s out here on the plains - where most Mongolians have to make a living - that future will be determined.

And back at the Ikh Tamir Valley - they’ve come together to celebrate life on the land.

14:21

Music

Community prepares for Naadam

Williams: Moving their homes as easily as Genghis Khan’s warriors - thousands of families have come together for a Nadaam - a festival.

14:41

Williams to camera

Super:

Evan Williams

Williams: Just like the economy, Mongolia's traditional festivals, the Naadam, were centralised and controlled. All the best horses and riders competed in the capital in what was renamed Revolution Victory Day.

It was way of suppressing the national culture. Now after almost 60 years, these big regional Naadams have been revived, and Mongolians are grabbing the chance with both hands.

14:53

Sergelan being interviewed

Williams: Here, too, Sergelan’s vodka profits are helping revive local culture. He’s putting up the prize money for the main event - a gruelling thirty kilometre race across the steppe.

15:18

Sergelan

Sergelan: It’s a big race and the owners of the racers learn lots.

15:30

Kids on horses

Williams: The riders - boys and girls of no more than 12 years old - ride bareback for more than an hour. Some get injured. There is even the occasional death.

It’s the sort of courage and endurance that could help pull Mongolia through the transition.

15:43

But sadly, these skills of the world’s last pastoral nomads are at risk - from their own government’s desire to modernise Mongolia by settling the nomads on farms.

Enkhbayar

Super:

Enkhbayar Nambar

Prime Minister, Mongolia

Enkhbayar: I don’t know in how many years, but inevitably, Mongolians will turn and come to a sedentary way of civilisation. And they will be settled down and have some intensified agriculture and animal husbandry and agriculture. And the traditions will be maybe left in the songs and customs and other kind of everyday life.

16:13

Nomad's house

Williams: But out on the steppe those traditions are still reality. The nomads prefer the roaming life they can trust.

16:44

Byamba

Byamba: Well I'm don't really know about this farming business -- I think it’s up to the people themselves. If some would like to sell their animals, and settle -- that’s fine -- but to end this nomadic life -- I don’t think it will ever happen.

16:52

Nomads race

Williams: Having carried it this far in history - Mongolia’s nomadic spirit will fight hard to survive this difficult transition - and for many it may still be their best chance of surviving in the race for the modern world.

17:19

Credits:

Reporter: Evan Williams

Camera: Ron Ekkel

Editor: Garth Thomas

Producer: Alison Rourke