Reports and articles

Escaping isn’t for everyone: How Kurdish smugglers navigate checkpoints
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Escaping isn’t for everyone: How Kurdish smugglers navigate checkpoints

This Working Paper looks at how smugglers navigate state and insurgent checkpoints in the Kurdish region of Iran. Through bribes that secure negotiated passages or using modified cars that enable evasion and circumventions, Kurdish smugglers co-produce contingent informal orders that vary significantly across these spatial nodes of power along illegal trade routes.

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Beyond the ‘Rebel’ Territorial Trap: Checkpoints in Myanmar
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Beyond the ‘Rebel’ Territorial Trap: Checkpoints in Myanmar

This Working Paper asks: what are the governance strategies and technologies that armed groups use to project authority? Comparing the use of checkpoints by two armed groups that operate in overlapping areas in Myanmar’s borderlands, Centre-fellow Tony Neil and Saw Day Chit find that armed groups use checkpoints differently to achieve different outcomes that are shaped by underlying ideological and cosmological foundations.

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DR Congo: Roadblocks at the Rhythm of the Country
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DR Congo: Roadblocks at the Rhythm of the Country

This Working Paper develops a political sociology of roadblocks to demonstrate how roadblocks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) contribute to the production and reproduction of public authority. The approach offers a refined conceptualisation of agency during roadblock encounters, which provides a better understanding of when and why people comply with demands made by roadblock operators and of the cumulative effects of the micro-practices enacted at roadblocks on broader sociopolitical orders

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Drivers of ISKP Recruitment in Afghanistan
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Drivers of ISKP Recruitment in Afghanistan

The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has proved to be remarkably resilient despite international and Taliban government efforts to destroy it. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of ISKP’s recruitment strategies, the varied experiences of its members, and the group’s operational dynamics across Afghanistan.

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Somalia’s isbaaro: Checkpoints and world-making beyond the state
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Somalia’s isbaaro: Checkpoints and world-making beyond the state

This working paper examines the dynamics of checkpoint authority in Somalia, focusing on how kinship, mobility and checkpoint practices intersect to shape political and social orders. The paper argues that checkpoints in Somalia—or isbaaro as they are locally called—are deeply embedded in the social fabric of clan society, where the practice of abanship—the brokerage of passage through clan territory—plays a crucial role. This brokerage not only facilitates trade but also reinforces clan identity and social differentiation

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Border control paradox: The political economy of smuggling between Colombia and Venezuela
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Border control paradox: The political economy of smuggling between Colombia and Venezuela

In this working paper, Jorge Mantilla explores state-criminal cooperation in roadblock politics. His study discusses the way in which, between 2015 and 2023, the bilateral tensions and border closure between Colombia and Venezuela created a political economy of smuggling in which state officials delegated basic state functions to organised crime groups to contain foes, domesticate illegal economies, and maintain social control.

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The Border Business: A Political Economy Analysis of Checkpoint Taxation in Afghanistan
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The Border Business: A Political Economy Analysis of Checkpoint Taxation in Afghanistan

Checkpoints and the transit taxes that can be levied at them have been central to the vagaries of Afghan state formation and conflict—and are crucial to understand the rise to power of the Taliban. In this new working paper Sarajuddin Isar posits that checkpoint taxation is a key means of creating and negotiating rents between state and non-state actors, driving political settlements and conflict.

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Roadblocks and Revenues: The Politics of Passage
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Roadblocks and Revenues: The Politics of Passage

From Afghanistan and Yemen and from Mali to Somalia, checkpoints are central to dynamics of armed conflict, funding insurgents, driving violence and shaping governance by various types of armed actors, state and non-state alike. A new working paper series on roadblocks and revenues sheds lights on checkpoints in conflict contexts across the world and provides a new window into dynamics of authority and power.

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