In December 2024, the Assad regime in Syria was overthrown. Today, Ahmed al-Sharaa is acting as the interim president of Syria, at the head of a new transitional government.
What will the future look like for Syria under its new leader? Will the coalition of rebel factions be able to work together to build a stable future for Syrians?
In this episode, Dr Nafees Hamid, Dr Rahaf Aldoughli, Nils Mallock, and Broderick McDonald discuss their research surveying and interviewing Syrian rebel fighters both before and after the fall of Assad, sharing insights into the motivations and values of Syria’s new rulers.
*This episode was recorded before the announcement of the new government. Follow ICSR_Centre on X to stay up to date with this research.
On this podcast, Jon Alterman speaks with Dr. Craig Larkin on Babel, where they explore different approaches to reconstruction and reconciliation following violence in the Middle East. Dr. Larkin is the director of the Center for the Study of Divided Societies at King’s College London and leads research on memory and conflict for XCEPT. His work examines how communal memory shapes and sustains violence.
In this interview, Clara May, Communications Manager for the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) project at King’s College London, speaks to Dr Inna Rudolf about her research on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) and the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), and explores why we need to challenge the idea that Shi’a militants are simply Iranian proxies.
Inna Rudolf: The goal of my articles was to shed light on the landscape of Islamic resistance factions in Iraq and to provide nuance regarding the differences between the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) and thePopular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), otherwise known as hashd. The IRI consists of different resistance factions that have, specifically since the events of 7 October 2023, been engaging in armed operations outside of the formal chain of command in Iraq, and the PMF is a state-recognised paramilitary umbrella group, which is recognised as part of the Iraqi armed forces. In most of the public discourse, however, the two umbrella organisations are often confused.
In my paper, All the Mahdi’s Men: Contextualising Nuances Within Iraq’s Islamic Resistance, I examine the ideological, historical, political, and pragmatic factors shaping the sometimes diverging resistance practices favoured by Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq (AAH) and Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH), two prominent Iran-leaning PMF factions. In The war on Gaza and Iraq’s resistance state, I explore how the differing responses of Iraqi resistance factions to Israel’s war on Gaza reflect their efforts to balance domestic and transnational considerations.
Most analysis of the resistance factions in Iraq considers the groups through the lens of proxy warfare, neglecting their agency and organisational identity, and instead framng them as pawns in a geopolitical chess match. This simplified portrayal is not only incorrect, but it is also dangerous, as it can lead to misguided policy decisions. It is important to understand that these groups have autonomy and possess agency to make decisions based on their own identity, values, interests, and ambitions.
In both articles, I sought to offer a fresh analytical perspective, allowing us to move away from seeing the groups as simply remotely controlled proxy actors and instead to consider their ability to act independently, while pursuing their own domestic and transnational visions. If we can understand the motivations, identity, and agency at the group level, this will allow us to paint a more accurate picture of the dynamics of the Islamic resistance landscape and thereby to adequately inform policymaking.
IR: The IRI is an umbrella brand, and there is no accurate data available on its operational capacities or the numbers of its constitutive members. As a result, it’s very difficult to trace which factions were involved in particular attacks. It’s plausible that, in some instances, there has been a higher degree of co-ordination between different groups, and, in other instances, one faction may have chosen to take the lead, while the others have merely followed suit or claimed credits.
I argue there is a logic to maintaining this ambiguity. Particularly for Iran-affiliated groups in the IRI which also have a presence in the PMF, it’s important not to jeopardise their affiliation with the PMF and the integrity of the paramilitary structure as a whole. The PMF provides a source of legitimacy, legal cover, economic benefits, and access to power, and it also retains a sacred status, as its origin is grounded in the fatwa of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Attributing attacks to the IRI umbrella, therefore, rather than to specific PMF groups, provides those factions with presumedly double membership with a convenient smoke screen. This is something that has allowed many of the veteran Iraqi resistance actors to pursue their domestic agendas while, at the same time, still positioning themselves as defenders of a transnational resistance cause.
IR: I always try to argue against this simplistic application of the label ‘proxy warrior’. Firstly, because there is no catch-all definition of what being a proxy entails, and secondly, because the term in itself is very static.
If a group engages in a military operation that involves actors from the so-called Axis of Resistance, or that aligns with Iran’s general interests, there is a tendency to believe that this group must be acting on the orders of Iran. Similarly, if a group chooses not to engage in such operations, then the assumption is that this conduct or hesitation signals a move away from Iran. While, in some cases, both of these presumptions may turn out to be true, neither of them necessarily reflects the real-time calculations of the actor involved. For instance, a group that is ideologically in sync with Iran’s vision for the region may also be focused on domestic matters and hence decide not to get engaged in armed resistance operations on Iraqi soil. Similarly, another faction may be opposed to some of Iran’s day to day policies regarding Iraq and its neighbours, but still decide to execute kinetic operations against Israel or US-led coalition forces, regardless of whether military escalation is in Iran’s imminent interest. As I argue in my papers, the way in which the Iraqi militants practice resistance is shaped by a complex interplay of motivations, ideological convictions, and interests, with each group possessing distinct and constantly evolving priorities, visions, and agendas.
We also need to consider the agility and learning curve of these veteran militant formations. A group may have acted as a conventional proxy agent under specific circumstances at a certain point in time, but its positioning vis-à-vis the Iran-led Axis of Resistance can evolve over the years. At a later point in time, the same group may have representatives in parliament, for example, and would re-evaluate the extent to which it wants to leverage its connections to Iran and other Axis actors. The relationship between Iran and the Iran-aligned militants is fluid and can’t be neatly summed up by the term ‘proxy warfare’.
One other key issue I want to highlight here is that sometimes we can be misled into thinking that Iran’s main interest in the PMF is in flexing the paramilitary’s muscle strength and exploiting its combat capabilities. Having pro-Iranian factions in the PMF means having allies embedded in a security agency which offers access to formal state legitimacy, financial resources, and domestic political leverage. This is far more beneficial to the Islamic Republic, especially at a time when Iran is politically and economically weakened and is likely to suffer further now that President Trump has restored his ‘maximum pressure’ campaign. Being able to rely on support from factions in the PMF also enables Iran to benefit from the smoke screen I mentioned earlier. The ambiguity means that Iran can play the PMF as a bargaining chip to sustain a threat perception, but it also offers Iran an opportunity to engage in plausible deniability where needed or whenever the factions’ affairs or readiness to escalate tend to spin out of control.
IR: It’s important to know what drives the different factions in order to understand how best to evaluate their actions and engage them accordingly. If you believe a group is simply acting as an Iranian proxy, your approach may neglect the group’s embeddedness in domestic formal and informal networks and therefore disregard the implications of an ill-timed targeted assassination campaign. Furthermore, if a group is pursuing a national political agenda in Iraq, you might have more success in sabotaging its influence and legitimacy claims if you simply focus on mapping and publicly highlighting incidents where it has acted outside of the formal chain of command of the state, or where it has disregarded or acted against the interests of Iraqi constituencies. Shedding light on such contradictions and exposing malign behaviour can, in the long run, be far more damaging to the group’s political and economic prospects than poorly executed targeting of its leadership cadres, especially whenever there is a risk of high collateral damage.
Similarly, it’s important to identify and acknowledge the ideological and structural differences between these groups if you are considering engaging them kinetically. If a member of a PMF-registered formation – which is part of the Iraqi security forces – is eliminated – let us say in the midst of a residential neighbourhood in the capital, this could be framed as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Such an action would simply give more fuel to the resistance rhetoric of Iraqi militants who claim that their ‘right to resist’ is rooted in the continued controversial presence of US forces, which is regarded by many of these factions as a form of foreign-imposed military occupation and thereby as a violation of Iraqi national sovereignty.
IR: The situation is continually evolving, but there are three key points to highlight. The first is that, despite widespread speculation, there has been no interference from the PMF in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime. The Iraqi government has shown a strong focus on restoring a degree of what we in a Western context would refer to as a state monopoly on violence, but this shouldn’t be mistaken for a disarmament of the PMF or a top-down stripping of their power. In the Iraqi security and political landscape, it is not uncommon for political parties to entertain an affiliated armed wing. By law, the PMF is part of the Iraqi security forces and so having registered brigades under the PMF roof is not viewed as an anomaly or even a violation. The PMF will thus undoubtedly continue to play a crucial role in Iraq’s security sector, but it remains to be seen whether the current Prime Minister will succeed in restraining certain PMF affiliates that act outside of the formal chain of command.
The second point to consider is the volatile dynamics in the security relationship between the US and Iraq. The Iraqi Prime Minister has signalled that the focus would be on transforming the security assistance received from the US-led coalition forces into a bilateral security sector cooperation between the US and Iraq. Even pro-Iranian militants tend to appreciate the need to continue cooperating with the US in the security field, especially with concerns over the resurgence of ISIS and a possible spillover of violence from Syria. However, provided such a beneficial arrangement does materialise, it would be quite a stretch for them to use this form of cooperation as a justification for waging armed resistance.
Furthermore, the breaking of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas is likely to shape the domestic approaches of the resistance-leaning factions. Pro-Iranian factions in Iraq had announced a suspension of attacks on Israel following the news of a ceasefire, but, on numerous occasions since, they have signalled their continued commitment to defending the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people. If Israel continues to attack Gaza, or if all parties fail to reach an inclusive agreement on ending the conflict that secures the future of Palestine, we are likely to see stronger responses coming from within Iraq. The perceived ‘responsibility to resist injustice’ is still central justification for the actions undertaken by representatives of Iraq’s Islamic resistance, regardless of whether or not this aligns with Iran’s geopolitical priorities. Without an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories and its continued violations of the truce agreement in Lebanon, it’s difficult to envision a scenario in which Iraq’s resistance warriors would voluntarily and sustainably lay down their weapons.
Nonetheless, while the moral imperative to defend the Palestinian cause offers a perpetual excuse for resistance-leaning factions to operate outside of the state’s chain of command, seasoned politicians from the Iran-leaning current are urgently seeking to project a more or less convincing veneer of a state monopoly over the use of force. The success of this delicate balancing act largely hinges on effectively managing the ongoing Security Sector Reform (SSR) process. The proclaimed goal is to neutralise rogue resistance factions – and prevent them from provoking an untimely military escalation in Iraq – by integrating them into a restructured and disciplined PMF, thereby reducing its perception as a challenge to state sovereignty. This manoeuvre seeks to appease Iraq’s American counterparts in the Trump administration, while consolidating the PMF’s status in the state defence infrastructure as an existential guarantee for the existing elite power-sharing framework.
In 2018, The Asia Foundation, the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, the Rift Valley Institute, and their local research partners came together to establish the X-Border Local Research Network. The goal was to deepen global understanding of the political, economic, and social dynamics shaping conflict-affected borderlands.
This podcast episode examines the network’s lasting impact, highlighting its contributions to locally-led research in conflict and peacebuilding. It explores key lessons learned and provides insights into how donors and organizations can support and sustain community-driven research. Through discussions, the program team underscores the importance of fostering inclusive, long-term research networks that empower local voices, ensuring that knowledge remains relevant, contextual, and impactful in addressing complex challenges.
Disclaimer: The opinions, findings, and conclusions stated herein are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the partner organizations or the UK government.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) plays a significant role in Iran’s Axis of Resistance, with its links to Iraq’s state security forces raising concerns about its influence and access to power. However, the IRI is not a unified organization; it consists of multiple armed factions, each with its own agendas and domestic interests, not all of which align with Iran’s objectives.
In this episode of the War Studies podcast, Dr. Craig Larkin speaks to Dr. Inna Rudolf and Dr. Renad Mansour, King’s College London XCEPT scholars, about their research into the IRI. They examine the domestic and transnational interests of IRI factions and discuss the extent to which the IRI can truly be considered an Iranian ‘proxy’.
I became involved in the Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) programme’s Local Research Network (LRN) at its inception in 2018. During the following years, the network introduced me to a wider community of researchers who share a similar interest in cross-border issues. This has led to extensive knowledge sharing and fruitful collaborations, particularly in terms of my personal focus on how agricultural transitions impact the experiences of women.
As well as helping me cultivate my networks within South Sudan, being part of the LRN has given me the opportunity to expand my horizons internationally. For example, I attended workshops in Bangkok, Addis Ababa and Nairobi, which opened my eyes to different research methodologies and provided me with guidance on writing policy papers. These skills have been further reinforced by online peer exchange events with the XCEPT programme’s international partners. I have also been able to establish lasting connections with employees of various UN agencies, NGOs, embassies and research institutions within and beyond South Sudan.
More generally, by fostering collaborative research projects with researchers from neighbouring countries, XCEPT enables comparative analysis and a more holistic understanding of cross-border dynamics. Just as importantly, the LRN facilitates direct access to local communities and their perspectives on cross-border issues, something I have found invaluable when it comes to unpacking the functioning of conflict and cooperation in borderlands. This approach has informed the various papers, blog posts and articles I have written or contributed to over recent years.
From a personal perspective, I can testify that my involvement in the project has vastly improved my data analysis and writing skills, bolstering my capacity to conduct impactful cross-borders research. In addition, I have put to practical use XCEPT capacity-building sessions on—among other subjects—conducting sensitive research in conflict zones.
Conducting fieldwork under XCEPT
I have had many extraordinary experiences during the fieldwork I conducted for XCEPT in South Sudan. In particular, I cherish my memories of women from different communities sharing their stories and experiences with me. As a South Sudanese woman who grew up in a cattle camp, I felt able to engage with my interviewees on an equal footing, providing me with insights an outsider may have struggled to glean.
Overall, my fieldwork has yielded a treasure trove of fascinating life stories. The passion for writing I have developed is in part driven by a desire to share these unique experiences with audiences around the world—something I consider to be a meaningful act of advocacy. In this respect, I am particularly proud of a briefing paper I wrote for XCEPT as part of the ‘Displaced Tastes’ research project, entitled ‘Migrating with Seeds: Women, agricultural knowledge and displacement in South Sudan’. Given the personal importance of this work, I go into further detail below, pulling out some key quotes.
Migrating with seeds
XCEPT’s focus on policy solutions means that the programme’s publications—from blog pieces to briefings to full-length reports—are tailored towards offering practical solutions to everyday challenges in conflict-affected border regions. The utility of this is demonstrated by the fact that South Sudan’s Ministry of Agriculture has acknowledged a number of important policy recommendations highlighted by the Displaced Tastes project. Moreover, ‘Migrating with Seeds’ was read by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and its partners, playing a role in the Rift Valley Institute (the managing organization for XCEPT) being given responsibility for the Participatory Impact Assessment of its seed provision interventions in South Sudan.
The basis for ‘Migrating with Seeds’ was the life story of my aunt, Mary Ajok Wetkwuot, born in 1961 in Rumbek East County, Lakes State. As I describe in my briefing, ‘I came to know her as a loving and kind-hearted person born into a family dominated by women’. Her story is a fascinating one:
Mary left Rumbek in the early 1980s because of aerial bombardments during the Second Sudanese Civil War and, after settling in Wau for two years, she crossed into northern Sudan. … When she first was displaced from Rumbek, she travelled with a small black bag containing her favourite sorghum and millet seeds, which she planted in every location she was displaced to.
Over time, my aunt experienced a shift from ‘a communal to a commercial system of agriculture’. Responding to this, she ‘tried hard to preserve the tastes and networks of the old system in the new one’, and ‘By travelling with seeds, often across borders, Mary allowed people living in displacement in Kassala to keep their grain traditions alive’. In doing so, she made a name for herself as a farmer of kech (a type of sorghum):
Over the past decades, Mary has continued to transmit this farming and cooking knowledge to her daughters, cousins and grandchildren, and with the harvest of the kech seeds with which she first departed from Rumbek in the 1980s, she has built a reputation that spans the Sudans.
When I came to interview her for the briefing:
She had claimed a small corner of the barracks where she was growing indigenous varieties of sorghum and millet. Although she had carved out a space for her agricultural activities, she expressed a longing to return to her vast ancestral land in Rumbek, to farm in the soil that she grew up in.
Not only is my aunt’s story deeply meaningful to me, I felt it could cast light on ‘the changing tastes for food in South Sudan in the context of the country’s economic transition and place in the regional, cross-border economy of grain’, as well as how local women deployed the ‘social and material capital of seeds … to manage the wider transitions experienced during South Sudan’s decades of war’. The positive reception the briefing received hopefully proves I succeeded in putting across these wider concerns, and is testament to XCEPT’s willingness to give priority to the knowledge produced by locally-based researchers.
The Author
Elizabeth Nyibol Malou is a researcher with the Rift Valley Institute in South Sudan, and is the author most recently of The Triple Burden: Women selling their labour in South Sudan. She was previously a lecturer at the Catholic University of South Sudan, in Juba.
I was first invited to join the Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) programme in 2019, having previously worked with the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) on research in South Sudan. This innovative project brought together international experts and early career researchers from across Africa and Asia under the umbrella of the Local Research Network (LRN). I was thrilled to be a part of it. The blog piece below offers my reflections on my time with the XCEPT programme, including what I personally gained from it and, conversely, what I was able to contribute towards it.
One of the LRN’s many strengths is that it enables early career researchers to work directly with more experienced experts when performing fieldwork. While some studies involve collaborative work between experts and locals, others are independently led by local researchers backed up by mentorship support from experts.
Not only has this approach enhanced the capacity and skills of many early career researchers—myself included—it has produced a wealth of locally grounded insights into the causes and impacts of borderland conflicts. These in turn have fed into a series of in-depth research reports aimed at national, regional and international policymakers.
The three phases of my involvement in XCEPT
My involvement in the XCEPT programme spanned six years (2019–2024) and can be broken down into three interconnected phases. During the first phase, I was invited to participate in several training workshops om methodologies and writing skills organized by XCEPT partners. More specifically, I attended a 2019 policy brief writing skill workshop in Beirut organized by Carnegie Middle East Centre (CMEC); a gender and generation workshop in Nairobi the same year; and ethics training at the Catholic University campus in Juba in early 2020—the latter two both organized by the RVI.
I had completed my undergraduate studies in South Sudan just a year before joining XCEPT, and at that point I could not paraphrase, cite or reference the work of others properly, let alone write a coherent full-length essay that put forward my own views. South Sudan’s education system is based on teaching students to read and memorize texts, with little emphasis placed on research and critical writing skills. This is compounded by poor educational facilities, such as a lack of modern libraries or access to digital resources.
By contrast, both the workshops themselves and the connections I forged with other research experts while attending them taught me a great deal about how research should be conducted. Looking back, my time spent at the workshops was fundamental in establishing my research career and an essential step in honing my writing skills.
The second phase—which to a degree overlapped with the first—revolved around collaborative research and mentorship support. Assuming the role of junior co-researcher, I collaborated with a more seasoned research expert on two major studies on the South Sudan–Sudan borderlands. Conducted over the course of 2019 and 2020, the research delved into centre–periphery relations, focusing on militarization, labour and migration.
As co-researcher, I participated in the entire research process, from design to publication and dissemination. This hands-on experience was invaluable, as was the mentorship and support provided by the senior researcher. In particular, their guidance was crucial when it came to putting the knowledge and skills I had gained from the training workshops into practice. During our two years of collaboration, I wrote a number of blog pieces on borderland dynamics, enhancing my writing skills and giving me the confidence to take the next step of conducting research independently.
So began the third phase of my involvement in XCEPT, made possible in part by the project’s underling principle of democratizing theory and practice. Not having to spend years familiarizing myself with complex, established theories gave me the opportunity to pursue independent research work at a much earlier stage than might otherwise have been the case.
The research I conducted during this time built on the previous collaborative work, exploring cross-border labour migration and conflicts on the South Sudan–Sudan border through a livelihood transition and conflict lens. The tangible outcome was two long reports (alongside numerous briefings) examining the impacts of war, migration and work on, firstly, South Sudan’s changing social relations, and, secondly, agricultural labour and cross-border migration.
How I benefited from XCEPT
My years spent at XCEPT have sparked a profound interest in cross-border migration, conflict and livelihood transitions, motivating me to continue exploring these themes in my future research. My ongoing PhD thesis, for instance, focuses on the bidirectional relationships between war economies and agrarian transitions in the South Sudan borderlands. Here, my aim is to build on the existing XCEPT research (as well as other sources) in order to better understand how such transitions reshape gendered patterns of accumulation, class structures and people’s economic livelihoods.
I have also benefited from further XCEPT workshops while transitioning into academia. For instance, two particularly useful workshops were held in 2014: one in Bangkok organized by the Asia Foundation and the other in Addis Ababa by RVI. While the former covered essential gender concepts, the latter elucidated key borderland theories. Not only did the workshops help inform my PhD research, they provided a pathway for the early career researchers in attendance to convert their XCEPT policy reports into peer-reviewed articles.
My involvement in XCEPT also allowed me to network with experts from across the globe, both early career researchers and long-serving professionals and academics. This threw up countless opportunities to learn from the work and experiences of others. Similarly, I met diplomats and officials from various international governments and NGOs at XCEPT engagements, expanding my sphere of acquaintances beyond the research community.
Finally, I learned many new things about places and people in the borderlands I had previously thought I knew everything about. Not only have the friendships I made and maintained with borderland residents enriched my life, they will be an essential element in my future research endeavours, providing easier access and useful contacts across the region.
What I contributed to XCEPT
Reflecting on my time with XCEPT, I like to think I not only benefited from the project, but was able to make a significant personal contribution to its work. I, along with my fellow early career researchers, produced numerous reports applying locally grounded knowledge and perspectives to relevant policy discussions. In addition, as part of the LRN, I disseminated research findings and recommendations to numerous international and national-level policymakers. Among the key events I participated in were gatherings at Chatham House and SOAS in London in 2019, and meetings at the UK embassy in Nairobi and the EU compound in Juba in 2021, not to mention several online events via digital platforms.
At the local level, I actively distributed copies of my reports, engaging local officials, traditional leaders, youth and women in informal discussions to ensure they had access to my findings. When doing so, I made sure to garner feedback on my work. At the other end of the scale, I attended engagements with officials and experts from international governments and agencies seeking to learn more about the South Sudan–Sudan borderlands.
As a member of the LRN, I also sought to build the capacity of others, participating in numerous XCEPT-organized courses and seminars held in Juba aimed at training new research assistants. Alongside these, RVI organized reflection workshops—led mostly by early career researchers, with support from experienced experts—in which we discussed challenges faced in the field and how we might mitigate them. The workshops provided an important peer exchange, learning and improvement platform for both the early career researchers and the newly trained research assistants.
In addition to leading the reflection and peer exchange workshops, I provided secondary mentorship support to the research assistants. In combination, these efforts provided many fresh undergraduates with the skills they needed to conduct qualitative research, enhancing RVI’s ability to cost-effectively reach hard-to-access areas in South Sudan.
Concluding thoughts
The impact of XCEPT on my research career extends far beyond capacity and skills development. Crucial as these elements are, their importance is matched and even exceed by the enduring connections I established with researchers and officials at LRN networking events.
Overall, my personal experience is testament to the critical role played by the LRN in the research journey of early career researchers. With many of these researchers now seeking to convert their XCEPT reports into peer-reviewed papers, ongoing support from experienced experts is a must. To ensure this happens, continued Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office funding for the LRN and its networking events is needed.
The Author
Joseph Majok is a PhD student in African Studies and a long-time national research consultant with the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) in South Sudan. He holds an MSc in Africa and International Development from the Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Majok has been with the RVI since 2017 as a research assistant and later as part of the RVI national researchers’ team. He was involved in numerous projects and extensively in the FCDO’s XCEPT consortium project as a member of the Local Research Network. Through XCEPT, Majok has co-authored and independently written several reports, policy briefs and blogs on cross-border migrations and livelihood transitions.
In 2019, I became a local researcher with the Cross-border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) programme, run by the Rift Valley Institute (RVI), an independent non-profit organization seeking to foster local knowledge on social, political and economic development in Eastern and Central Africa. Though this was not my first research experience, it was my introduction to being part of a global team of researchers—something that greatly broadened my horizons. With this in mind, the following blogpost details my varied experiences in Somalia as part of the XCEPT team.
A personal journey of growth
Enthused and curious, I joined the XCEPT team in the hope of amplifying voices too often sidelined in mainstream research. At that point, I had little idea of the extent to which the coming years would not only nurture my professional growth, but grant me unique insights into the centring of local perspectives.
In short, participating in the XCEPT project has been an enriching experience. Hands-on research in a variety of remote, conflict-affected borderlands has opened my eyes to the possibilities of research methodologies, data analysis and collaborative research design. More importantly, I have honed my ability to navigate complex social and cultural dynamics, giving me the confidence to work in environments where trust is a precious commodity.
A couple of moments in particular stand out. On one occasion I was leading a focus group discussion in the border district of Galkayo. At first, I was apprehensive about how the community members would perceive yet another data collector turning up. I needn’t have worried—my shared cultural background and understanding of local customs proved invaluable in giving the participants the assurances they needed to share their hopes and fears. For me, this experience reaffirmed the importance of using local researchers, particularly female ones, who are embedded in the communities they study.
Another experience that sticks in my mind took place when I was conducting interviews with women khat traders in Galkayo. One day, I had the rare opportunity to follow a woman named Shukri, experiencing firsthand the daily lives of those involved in the khat trade. It gave me a profound insight I might otherwise have overlooked into the struggles local women deal with as a matter of course.
Outputs from my XCEPT research
Seeking to make innovative use of my encounter with Shukri, I helped create an online visual timelinedepicting her life journey, experiences and networks. This took place during the Understanding and Visualising the ‘Transnational Everyday’ in the Horn of Africa sessions that were held in Addis Ababa in 2020, as part of the process of producing an interactive report on how individuals move and interact across borders.
I also drew on my interactions with the khat traders when writing a briefing for RVI called ‘Khat and COVID-19: Somalia’s cross-border economy in the time of coronavirus’ and a longer report titled ‘Galkayo’s Khat Trade: The role of women traders in Puntland, Somalia’. As this suggests, the research I conducted was used extensively in a variety of forms, underlining both its value and the willingness of XCEPT to seek new ways of disseminating information. Moreover, from a personal point of view, it gave me a deep insight into the complex socioeconomic landscape of Galkayo and the wider region.
The trade in khat—a mild stimulant, widely consumed by men in particular—is one of the most lucrative business sectors in the cross-border economy of the Somali regions. Additionally, the fact that khat leaves are grown in the highland areas of Kenya and Ethiopia before being exported to Somalia makes it a transnational sector. Overall, the khat trade is extremely profitable, providing numerous jobs and business opportunities for Somalis, while generating considerable revenue for various authorities. To quote my previously mentioned briefing:
According to the Somaliland Annual Statistical Report 2018, khat ordinarily accounts for 30 per cent of domestic revenues, or USD 36,449,435. Between USD 120,000 and USD 150,000 was collected daily from tax on khat imports in Kalabaydh customs station.
Nevertheless, statistical reports such as this often generalize data regarding the khat business in Somalia, thereby failing to include the voices of women. This is despite the fact, to quote my report:
For women in Puntland, many of whom live under challenging financial circumstances while fulfilling the role of breadwinner of their household, the khat trade provides opportunities to make money to support their families. Mostly this is through petty trade—selling khat in the market—which women are seen as being particularly effective at. … Having their own source of income can give women freedom and independence.
Some of the more successful women, known locally as ‘khat queens’, have even managed to gain a degree of commercial and political power through their business achievements in the sector. Amid this context, the closure of borders and subsequent governmental bans on khat that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic had dire impacts for those engaged in khat trade, especially women. Nevertheless, even in the face of these draconian measures, khat continued to enter Somalia via unconventional routes.
Contributions to local knowledge systems
As all of the above implies, collecting gender-desegregated data is key to obtaining the information necessary to inform successful policymaking. In terms of the Galkayo study, examining how gender and other social inequalities shape access to power helped bring women’s perspectives to the fore. These views in turn contributed to local decision-making and policy development. For example, local businesswomen became important stakeholders in discussions around societal, peacebuilding and conflict-resolution issues, leading to improved service delivery for women and their families.
Following the pandemic lockdown, the municipality adjusted its strategies to make them more in line with women’s needs and local cultural norms. In particular, greater emphasis was put on fostering collaboration.Through their associations, the women khat traders were able to increase their standing within the community, allowing them to move their merchandise to safer places in Galkayo.
A phrase used by several respondents in both South and North Galkayo was ‘War la helaa Talo la helaa’, which broadly speaking means that when you have information, you can make better decisions. Or, put another way, greater understanding of specific challenges yields more effective solutions. In the case of the safety issues confronting Galkayo’s women, this translated into more street lightening for khat traders and bigger, cleaner market spaces for businesswomen. Alongside this, several cases concerning outstanding debts were resolved to the benefit of the women involved and their families.
Local Research Network (LRN)
Taking a step back from my own work, the XCEPT Local Research Network (LRN) connects researchers from across the world—South Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, Ethiopia and Somalia—through face-to-face and online training workshops and study tours. This collaborative spirit exemplifies the project’s ethos of centring local voices, spotlighting the importance of such perspectives in unpacking complex but often taken-for-granted issues.
Collaborating with researchers from different regions and disciplines provided me with fresh perspectives and a deeper appreciation of the interconnectedness of cross-border issues. These relationships have led to ongoing collaborations that continue to enrich my work. Reflecting on my experiences, I am filled with gratitude that I have been able to contribute to a project that so explicitly prioritizes local expertise.
On top of this, the skills and connections I developed through the XCEPT project have opened the door to numerous opportunities that lie beyond the immediate scope of my research. These range from speaking at international conferences to contributing to policy discussions at the national, regional and global level.
All this has reinforced my belief in the transformative potential of locally led research when it comes to influencing broader narratives and policies. Also, from a personal standpoint, the project expanded my professional network in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.
Benefits of knowledge and evidence for local communities
Today, there is greater awareness in Somalia about the knowledge and evidence generated by XCEPT. In particular, by prioritizing the expertise of local researchers and centring local voices, the project has not only added depth to its findings, but ensured the narratives of those living in conflict-affected borderlands are represented authentically.
XCEPT’s emphasis on expanding research networks in remote regions has been transformative. In providing a platform for marginalized communities to share their experiences, stereotypes have been challenged and understandings broadened. Having ready access to credible information is also a boon for practitioners, researchers, governments and non-governmental organizations alike, potentially leading to more nuanced, effective interventions.
The links between the XCEPT project and my PhD research
There are several links and overlaps between the XCEPT project and my PhD research project. To begin with, there are thematic overlaps as both projects seek to better understand how individuals, goods and ideas interact across conflict borders and transnationally, taking Somali women as their starting point. The findings from both projects contribute to better understanding of the lived realities of Somali businesswomen in Somali and those in diaspora. My PhD research project can help inform policy actors on how diaspora women and female refugees particularly Somalis in Zambia, establish belonging and political agency necessary for mobilizing, channeling, and delivering humanitarian relief aid to families and communities in Somalia during disasters.
There are methodological overlaps as well as both projects use qualitative research methods, such as ethnography, Key Informant Interviews, and Focus Group Discussions to capture lived experiences and narratives as critical in telling complex stories for shaping policy and practice. Through a wide range of data visualization techniques and working on the visualizing the ‘transnational everyday’ project, I have learned how to use tools such as Flowmap.blue and the free online platform StorymapJS—where I was able to upload qualitative material and plot locations by place-name or coordinates. I have used the knowledge and skills gained to make sense of data from narrative and life-history interviews and recounted journeys within and across borders to simplify personal testimonies, explanations, audio/visual material data collected from Somali businesswomen in Galkayo and Lusaka into routes of movement.
Insights from the XCEPT project have enriched my PhD analysis by providing comparative perspectives between fragility and transnationalism – women in the khat trade in Galkayo vis a vis diaspora businesswomen and female refugees in Zambia. My dual role as a researcher and practitioner in Somalia allowed for a practice-informed academic perspective. The XCEPT project offered me a platform for engagement with other researchers, policymakers, development actors, and local communities. My PhD research complements XCEPT’s broader objectives by deepening understanding of transnational movements of individuals, goods and ideas across conflict borders, fragile contexts and diaspora.
Final thoughts
Being part of the XCEPT project has shown me just how important local collaborations and support networks are when conducting research in conflict-affected areas. Beyond this, through listening to the diverse experiences shared by my fellow LRN researchers, I have learned the value of building trust among communities, particularly when navigating sensitive social, political and economic issues.
In terms of the research I undertook om behalf of XCEPT, the Galkayo study on the role of women in the cross-border khat trade economy offers concrete proof of how a focus on local knowledge can help in understanding community needs and promoting effective strategies, especially in conflict-prone areas.
The Author
Sahra Ahmed Koshin is a PhD Candidate at the Universities of Copenhagen and Nairobi, specializing in the Horn of African Diaspora. She holds two MA degrees—an MA in Cultural Anthropology from the Leiden University and an MA in Development Studies from Radboud University Nijmegen both in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on Diaspora Humanitarianism in Complex Crises, particularly the role of Somali businesswomen and female refugees in Zambia. She is a Somali gender expert specializing in integrating gender and inclusion across international development programs and activities.
This video highlights the Community-Based Participatory Methodology (CBPR) and Community-Driven Research approach developed by the Center for Peace and Justice (CPJ) at BRAC University. It will explore how this innovative approach was initially pioneered in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, focusing on refugee governance, and later adapted for new research in Jessore, Bangladesh, addressing critical issues of climate change, migration, and fragility along the Bangladesh-India borderland.
In this episode, we highlight the Women Researchers Fellowship, an initiative by the X-Border Local Research Network that supports early-career female researchers in conflict-affected border regions across Asia, MENA, and the Horn of Africa. The fellows share their research, the challenges they face in male-dominated fields, and the new networks they’ve built through the XCEPT programme. Listen as these six distinguished fellows discuss their areas of interest, offer insights into researching in conflict zones, and explore the contributions they aim to make in their fields.
The Research Fellows
Hilina Berhanu Degefa, Ethiopia
Women’s participation in non-state ethnic and ethno-national armed groups in Ethiopia with cross-border implications with Kenya and internal borders.
Htoo Htet Naing, Myanmar
Exploring aspirations and challenges:community perceptions of governance stability and peacebuilding in northern Rakhine states.
Moneera Yassien, Sudan
Use of quantitative methods to analyze the impact of localized conflict on cross-border trade on the Kenya-Uganda border.
Salma Daoudi, Morocco
Complexities of healthcare and impact on security and wellbeing of displaced Syrians on the Turkish-Syria border regions.
Ilyssa Yahmi, Algeria
Smuggling and conflict in the Sahara region in two-fold: Smuggling as a tool for rebel control and governance; and studying the relationship between human smuggling and border securitization.
Faryak Khan, Pakistan
Exploring the peace and conflict nexus in new emerged tribal districts in Pakistan especially in the northwestern border with Afghanistan.
