Wars over checkpoints: Nine theses on roadblocks and the politics of circulation in conflict-affected borderlands

This working paper advances nine theses on checkpoints (or roadblocks) as central
institutions in contemporary conflict-affected borderlands. Drawing on discussions at a
dedicated workshop involving researchers working on Chad, DR Congo, Libya, Myanmar,
South Sudan, West Africa and Yemen, the paper challenges narrow readings of
roadblocks exclusively as security devices or sites of corruption. Instead, it
conceptualises them as politically and economically generative nodes through which
authority is exercised, rents are extracted and redistributed, markets are shaped, and
conflict is financed. The paper shows how control over circulation often trumps territorial
control; how checkpoint governance varies systematically with transport geographies
and trade density; and how state and non-state actors frequently converge in practice,
sometimes with insurgents outperforming governments in predictability and
standardisation. The paper further demonstrates that checkpoint proliferation can
reflect deliberate coalition management or coping strategies under fiscal collapse rather
than governance failure, and that the costs of checkpoint taxation are borne indirectly
through commodity chains, disproportionately affecting vulnerable producers and
consumers. By organising these insights into nine analytically distinct but tension-filled
theses, the paper offers diagnostic tools rather than prescriptions, aimed at scholars,
policymakers, and practitioners concerned with conflict financing, humanitarian access
and stabilisation in borderland economies structured by circulation.