THERE was a party going on in Mongolia last week that the rest of the world might have some trouble understanding.

Actually, the idea was simple: Real leaders – even those who are hated by the rest of the world – can earn the sort of love from their own people that some rulers can only dream of attaining.

To those he conquered, Genghis Khan was head of a barbaric army that used terror and butchery to forge an empire, destroying whole cities and laying waste to civilisations that opposed him.

But for Mongolians, the Great Khan is revered as a peacemaker and the founder of a nation. Last week they poured into their capital, Ulan Bator, to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Mongol Empire, which eventually stretched from Myanmar to Poland.

Billboards in Mongolia proudly declare Genghis Khan “the man of the millennium”. His face is on every banknote. And Chinggis Khan vodka is fast overtaking airag, or fermented horse milk, as the national beverage. But maybe that’s not so surprising.

To complete his legacy, on July 10 the Mongolian government unveiled a huge statue of Genghis in the capital’s main square – though construction is not yet complete due to “contract disputes”.

“He was a peacekeeper. He was a great man,” one onlooker at the ceremony told AFP. “He united separate tribes who were fighting into one empire, and then he tried to unite the world.”

Myanmar people may remember Genghis a bit differently, after his grandson, Kublai Khan, marched into Bagan and chased off its pathologically inept king, Narathihapate.

But as a military ruler, Genghis Khan showed his people the kind of leadership that was sorely lacking in Myanmar, earning him a respect and devotion that still unite Mongolians today.

Genghis did away with ethnic differences in his homeland, uniting what were previously a collection of warring tribes into a single nation. In the army, he mixed people from different tribes into the same unit, forging bonds when they were forced to defend one another.

He also earned loyalty by running his empire as a strict meritocracy where favours, bribes and family connections held little sway.

Genghis realised that corruption and cronyism only waste human potential. By killing them off, he built the most efficient fighting force in the world.

He used that force to conquer vast territories, opening trade routes that stretched from Europe to Asia. He gave his conquered subjects freedom of religion and local autonomy, established tax codes and outlawed the kidnapping of women.

Unfortunately many of Genghis’s military tactics, such as rape, forced labour, burning villages, stealing crops and brutally crushing any attempt at resistance, are still in use today.

Yet the legacy of Genghis’s project is unassailable. He built the biggest empire the world has ever seen – but his success is not measured in territory alone.
A recent genetic study showed that 8 percent of men living in the former Mongol empire carry what is likely Genghis Khan’s Y chromosome. That’s roughly 16 million descendants living today – 0.5 percent of the world’s entire male popula-tion.

Mongolia’s Soviet rulers were so intimidated by Genghis’s popularity that they banned any mention of his name, fearing his cult of personality would spark resistance to their authoritarian rule.

In retrospect, their fears were well founded. The incompetent rulers that drove Mongolia into isolation and economic backwardness are gone, but Genghis Khan still commands a loyalty that the would-be kings of today’s world could never attain.