Drawing on research in Chad, DR Congo, Libya, Myanmar, South Sudan, West Africa and Yemen, this Working Paper challenges narrow readings of roadblocks 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.

From Afghanistan and Yemen and from Mali to Somalia, checkpoints are central to dynamics of armed conflict, funding insurgents, driving violence and shaping governance by various types of armed actors, state and non-state alike. A new working paper series on roadblocks and revenues sheds lights on checkpoints in conflict contexts across the world and provides a new window into dynamics of authority and power.