What's your opinion of George Bush? The Tibetan manager looked at me in the rearview mirror as we bounced across the grassland. I looked at my boss and both our minds raced for a safe response to this loaded question. Before either of us could speak he answered his own inquiry matter-of-factly: "Best president ever." What? Why's that? I was relieved not to have to answer the question myself but at a loss for the reasoning behind his super-enthusiastic support of the controversial US president. "He kills Muslims. They should be wiped off the earth." Wow. My boss continued the conversation in Chinese trying to reason with the manager about his harsh judgment of a huge segment of the world's inhabitants based simply on religion. I couldn't follow the exchange and looked out the window watching unbelievably beautiful mountains and plains roll by as the golden afternoon melted into the pastels of sunset and puzzled over why the Tibetans hate the Muslims.

I've heard rumors that deep in Tibetan Buddhism there are prophecies of an armageddon type battle between Buddhists and Muslims- intriguing but I've never seen any evidence for this claim. In present times Muslim minorities control most of the livestock and wool trade between Tibetan herders and Chinese markets and also many of the businesses that process those inputs such as slaughterhouses and carpet factories. They also bring many of the goods that the Tibetans need into the region. In the areas where we work, illiteracy an innumeracy rates are over 90%- putting traders at a distinct advantage against the herders. But this advantage could be exploited by anyone- it's just the fact that Muslims control much of the trade, meat, and wool economy in the region that makes them the ones who are seen as the exploiters.

Muslim minority groups such as the Hui, the Uyghurs and the Kazakhs make up a huge proportion of the population of Xinjiang- China's westernmost province through which the ancient silk road passed- and also a large proportion of all the major cities surrounding the Tibetan Plateau. The boundaries of the Muslim peoples lie much more naturally within neighboring Kazakhstan and Pakistan- and therefore the Chinese are continually wary of an uprising in the western lands and maintain a substantial troop presence in the region. The Tibetans hate the Muslims, the Muslims hate the Chinese, the Chinese want to subdue both and maintain control of their lands.

My boss led the manager through a series of logical questions, eventually winning the concession that maybe the two-year old and younger Muslim children might not deserve to die. The conversation moved on to care for the grassland and protection of wildlife.