The Taliban took over Afghanistan one border post at a time. The Congolese rebel group M23 built its financial base by sitting on a single crossing point between eastern DRC and Uganda, extracting tens of thousands of dollars a month without controlling significant territory. Yemen’s Houthis outperform the Yemeni Government by offering a more predictable experience at precisely the checkpoints that matter most to traders.
This brief draws on a multi-country comparative research project – covering Yemen, Afghanistan, DR Congo, South Sudan, Myanmar, and countries in the Sahel and West Africa – to argue that checkpoints shine a light on conflict dynamics in ways that policymakers have barely begun to explore.
Key Takeaways
- Shifts in checkpoint control should be mapped as a useful heuristic for tracking rapidly changing conflict dynamics.
- Trade corridors and commodity chains should be mapped before designing stabilisation or security programmes.
- Checkpoint proliferation should not automatically be read as governance failure; moreover, crackdowns can displace violence rather than ending it.
- Apply a regional lens: neighbours’ trade interests can outlast any political settlement.
This policy brief is part of the TRACE (Trade, Rents, and Authority in borderland Checkpoint Economies) project, and was first published on the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) website.