The 2008 Khaan Quest exercises added troops from France, India, Nepal and Thailand to the U.S. Pacific Command-run operation.
The BBC reported at the time:
"As exercises go, these ones are relatively small - but they are symbolic.
"They represent part of Mongolia's ongoing efforts to build ties that extend beyond its two super-power neighbours." [25]
In July of 2008 Mongolia was invited to participate in the 20-nation Pacific Rim Airpower Symposium held in the capital of Malaysia. Mongolia doesn't border the Pacific or even have a navy. It is separated from that ocean by hundreds of miles of Chinese and Russian territory.
The four-day event was hosted by the Royal Malaysian Air Force and U.S. Pacific Air Forces' 13th Air Force, and included participants from the U.S., Malaysia, Mongolia, Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, India, Indonesia, Japan, Nepal, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. The commander of the 13th Air Force, Lieutenant General Loyd Utterback, remarked at the time: "Through this symposium, we have a great opportunity to share and understand what each nation brings to the battlefield." [26]
Mongolian forces were also part of a U.S.-led military exercise on the order of Khaan Quest in Bangladesh in April of 2008 along with troops from the U.S. and the host nation, Brunei, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nepal, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Tonga.
Following by three years what appeared like an attempt at a "color revolution" scenario in Mongolia in March and April of 2005 ahead of a presidential election (on the heels of successful equivalents in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan), riots broke out in Ulan Bator after parliamentary elections in the summer of 2008. The standard "color revolution" technique. Molotov cocktails were hurled into the offices of the ruling Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party and at least five people were killed and 300 injured, leading to a four-day state of emergency being declared. (The protests were led by supporters of the Democratic Party of Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, about whom more later.)
Five months afterward, in early November, Mongolia and Russia held a joint
peacekeeping training exercise in the first country, the only joint maneuvers of any sort since the breakup of the Soviet Union seventeen years earlier. In the interim the Pentagon had led six comparable exercises in Mongolia from 2003-2008.
Mongolia was granted observer status in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (whose members are China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) in 2004, but in the succeeding six years has made no effort to gain full membership.
In July of 2009 the nation's military announced that it would expand upon previous deployments to Afghanistan, limited to artillery training units, by sending a full contingent of troops as part of "cooperation that stems from its 'third neighbor' policy to reach out to allies other than China and Russia," meaning the U.S. and NATO. [27]
On August 15 the twelve-day Khaan Quest 2009 exercises were launched under U.S. leadership. In addition to American and Mongolian forces, troops from Cambodia, India, Japan and South Korea participated.
"The exercise is the most visible form of US-Mongolian military cooperation," which "grew out of Mongolia's participation in the US-led war in Iraq, the first combat action that Mongolian troops had seen since World War II."
"In addition to the Khaan Quest exercise, US military cooperation with Mongolia includes the Marine Leadership Development Exchange Program, an initiative unique to Mongolia in which a small group of US Marines 'embeds' with Mongolian forces full time to help train them in western military methods." [28]
Developing out of the annual Khaan Quest exercises, a Mongolian Expeditionary Force consisting of "elite soldiers selected by Mongolian Armed Forces Maj. Javkhlanbayar Dondogdorj specifically" for Afghanistan are to be deployed to the war front in that country. [29]
The exercises in Mongolia were preceded by a United Nations Staff Officers Course run under the U.S. State Department's Global Peace Operations Initiative with officers from the U.S., Mongolia, Germany, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
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