Isbaaro: Checkpoints and world-making beyond the state

This 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 challenges the notion, gaining traction in the literature on taxation and conflict, that checkpoint governance is either an expression of statelike power or indicative of the state’s absence. Instead, it 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. Drawing on participatory cartography and semi-structured interviews with over 80 Somali road users, we contend that checkpoints serve as sites of social navigation and identity formation, reflecting broader historical and contemporary struggles over mobility and trade. We propose that ‘clan capital’, or standing within clan society, is key to brokering passage along checkpoints, but genealogical differences also become accentuated at checkpoints, and clan formations reinforced and reshaped in struggles over checkpoint rents. We understand this dynamic through the principle of schismogenesis—or the process of social division and differentiation—whereby fiscal disagreements are a central driver for kinship groups to differentiate themselves from one another, resulting in new political forms and identities. We conclude that checkpoints are sites where we can observe some of the more complex and fluctuating political dynamics of the Somali territories that have long confounded analysts, international practitioners and policymakers. While we focus empirically on the case of Somalia, we expect our analysis to resonate in other similar settings where capital concentrates in the trade sector and state authority is weak.