PAYING THE PRICE - THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CHECKPOINTS IN SOMALIA

PAYING THE PRICE THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CHECKPOINTS IN SOMALIA Peer Schouten PAYING THE PRICE THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CHECKPOINTS IN SOMALIA Peer Schouten PAYING THE PRICE THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF CHECKPOINTS IN SOMALIA THE AUTHOR Peer Schouten is a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, associate researcher at the International Peace Information Service, and visit. [...] A more complete study would also have to: pay more attention to the taxation of non-motorized transport such as cattle on the hoof and donkey carts; map the many informal checkpoints in Puntland and Somaliland;12 include checkpoints along portions of routes across the border in Kenya and Ethiopia; and cover the many secondary routes in the country. [...] The logic of claiming a transit tax for the right of passage in the Somali territories arguably started with the expansion of long-distance caravan trade in the early nineteenth century: Each [clan] required some access to the major nodes and arteries of commercial exchange; each guarded its right to oversee one leg of the caravan trade as jealously as its guarded its home well and reserve grazing. [...] Rift Valley Institute PAYING THE PRICE 23 The defeat of the ICU and enmity for the foreign-supported offensive prompted the rise of al- Shabaab in 2008, which initially controlled portions of the capital and other big towns such as Kismayo. [...] This accentuates the profile of the government as a dishonest broker and a predatory actor on the less powerful.82 The effect of checkpoints on local producers in Somalia is even more subtle yet, as is illustrated in how checkpoints interact with the broader dynamics of marginalization of farming communities.