This paper examines the evolution of the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) from 2021 through 2024, tracing its transformation from a severely weakened entity to an adaptive, decentralised organisation capable of posing a persistent threat in Afghanistan.

Drawing on over 100 qualitative interviews with ex-ISKP members, supporters and sympathisers, it provides an insider perspective into ISKP’s strategies, challenges and resilience in the face of sustained Taliban counteroperations.

Despite significant losses – including the elimination of key leaders, mass surrenders and the disruption of critical operations – ISKP has maintained visibility and relevance. At the same time, Taliban counterterrorism strategies have evolved. The Taliban’s campaign has suppressed ISKP’s territorial and operational ambitions but has not eradicated its ideological appeal.

This paper examines how Sudanese civilians, facing widespread violence from the ongoing conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have been compelled to negotiate survival strategies with warring factions. This report highlights the shift in Sudan’s power struggle, which has devolved from a national conflict into highly localized battles, particularly in Darfur. In response, local community leaders and power brokers have facilitated fragile truces to provide temporary protections, allow for trade, and secure safe passage for civilians.

This Working Paper looks at how smugglers navigate state and insurgent checkpoints in the Kurdish region of Iran. Through bribes that secure negotiated passages or using modified cars that enable evasion and circumventions, Kurdish smugglers co-produce contingent informal orders that vary significantly across these spatial nodes of power along illegal trade routes.

This Working Paper asks: what are the governance strategies and technologies that armed groups use to project authority? Comparing the use of checkpoints by two armed groups that operate in overlapping areas in Myanmar’s borderlands, Centre-fellow Tony Neil and Saw Day Chit find that armed groups use checkpoints differently to achieve different outcomes that are shaped by underlying ideological and cosmological foundations.

This Working Paper develops a political sociology of roadblocks to demonstrate how roadblocks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) contribute to the production and reproduction of public authority. The approach offers a refined conceptualisation of agency during roadblock encounters, which provides a better understanding of when and why people comply with demands made by roadblock operators and of the cumulative effects of the micro-practices enacted at roadblocks on broader sociopolitical orders

The Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) has proved to be remarkably resilient despite international and Taliban government efforts to destroy it. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of ISKP’s recruitment strategies, the varied experiences of its members, and the group’s operational dynamics across Afghanistan.

This working 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 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

Following Myanmar’s February 2021 coup, checkpoints have exploded, crucial to both the military junta and resistance forces. Based on fieldwork in Sagaing Region and Chin State in 2022-2023, this paper by Gerard McCarthy and Kyle Nyana theorises the relational dynamics at and between their respective checkpoints.

In this working paper, Jorge Mantilla explores state-criminal cooperation in roadblock politics. His study discusses the way in which, between 2015 and 2023, the bilateral tensions and border closure between Colombia and Venezuela created a political economy of smuggling in which state officials delegated basic state functions to organised crime groups to contain foes, domesticate illegal economies, and maintain social control.

The flow of opium presented unique opportunities and challenges for the Burmese armed groups interested in profiting from its concentrated wealth. In this working paper, John Buchanan explores the emerging features of armed group predation tied to the explosive growth of Shan State’s opium sector from the 1950s to the 1990s.