Across conflict-affected borderlands, checkpoints are often treated as peripheral irritants – informal sites of taxation or obstruction along otherwise coherent trade routes. The TRACE project challenges this view.

Bringing together a set of comparative case studies from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, TRACE examines checkpoints as central political and economic institutions that shape how trade, authority and violence are organised. Rather than sitting on top of existing systems, checkpoints frequently constitute the infrastructure of circulation itself – enabling, regulating and transforming flows of goods, people and information.

About the Research

TRACE explores the politics of circulation through detailed empirical research across diverse settings, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Yemen, Myanmar, West Africa, Sudan and South Sudan.

Across these cases, the research highlights three broad insights:

  • Checkpoint systems are shaped as much by geopolitics as by local dynamics – including regional rivalries, cross-border state strategies and competition over corridors.
  • Authority over checkpoints varies widely – from fragmented, negotiated arrangements to highly centralised and quasi-bureaucratic systems, sometimes with non-state actors outperforming states in coordination and control.
  • Checkpoints can be constitutive infrastructure – not merely taxing trade but actively making circulation possible and defining the boundaries between licit and illicit exchange.

Together, these findings push beyond state-centric frameworks and offer a new way of understanding how power operates in conflict-affected economies.

Policy brief

Checkpoints, not territory: rethinking conflict | Peer Schouten

This policy brief challenges conventional understandings of conflict by showing that control over circulation – rather than territory – lies at the centre of many contemporary wars. Drawing on comparative research across Yemen, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, Myanmar, and countries in the Sahel and West Africa, it argues that checkpoints offer a critical but underexplored lens on conflict dynamics. In doing so, the brief highlights how these systems of control shape power, governance and everyday life, and sets out important implications for policy and programming.

Working papers

The TRACE working papers are designed not only as stand-alone contributions, but as building blocks for a broader comparative argument. Taken together, the research moves beyond describing checkpoint practices to explaining how checkpoint regimes emerge, evolve and reshape political and economic order. The following papers illustrate this collective effort, bringing together country-based studies led by individual authors whose work grounds the wider comparative insights.

Public Briefing

On 18 June XCEPT hosted a briefing on how checkpoint economies shape conflict dynamics, governance, humanitarian access, and livelihoods across fragile and conflict-affected settings. Watch the recording of the briefing below.