Drawing on existing literature and case studies, this paper suggests two new directions for the study of checkpoints in the political economy of conflict.
First, it proposes that checkpoints along transnational trade routes are central to conflict economies, facilitating the extraction of rents by armed groups without the need for extensive territorial control or bargaining with local populations. It asks what this ‘extraversion’ of conflict economies means for how we think about authority and order in conflict.
Second, the paper explores the distributional impacts of checkpoint taxation. Because checkpoints are indirect taxes, transporters subjected to checkpoint exactions are able to pass the cost onwards to diffuse groups of producers and consumers further along commodity chains. The available evidence suggests that the burden of checkpoint taxes in conflict disproportionately falls on already vulnerable populations.
This paper is the tenth in a new working paper series on Roadblocks and revenues, a collaboration between ICTD, the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), and the Centre on Armed Groups (CAG).
- Read the first paper, which introduces the working paper series
- The second one, which focuses on cross-border trade and state formation in Afghanistan
- The third, on the political economy of opium flows in Burma/Myanmar
- The fourth, on criminal group checkpoints governing cross-border smuggling between Colombia & Venezuela
- The fifth, on how checkpoints drive increasing autonomy in the Myanmar civil war
- The sixth, on checkpoints, fragmentation, and social differentiation in Somalia
- The seventh, on the dramaturgy of Congo’s roadblocks
- The eight, on the rebel-territorial trap in Myanmar
- And the ninth on navigational tactics at checkpoints in Iran
