9

TRADING SPACES
Afghan borderland brokers and the
transformation of the margins1

Jonathan Goodhand, Jan Koehler, and Jasmine Bhatia

Introduction
This chapter focuses on brokers and brokerage in the context of cross border smuggling or illicit
trade. Drawing on illustrative case study material from the borderscapes of eastern and western
Afghanistan, we shine a light on the lives of two brokers who act as go-betweens and gate-
keepers in these complex and often conflictual transnational trading networks. One is a tribal
broker in Nangarhar province on the Pakistan border, and another is an illicit trader in Nimroz
province on the Iranian border. By focusing on their lives we aim to achieve two things: firstly,
to present new empirical evidence on brokers, so as to better understand their lives, motiva-
tions, roles and effects – and in particular, how they adapted to border hardening and closures.
Specifically, we explore the positionality of brokers in terms of their personal backgrounds, their
ability to straddle lifeworlds, the ‘deal spaces’ they occupy, the resources and commodities they
move, and the key pathways, corridors and choke points that channel and direct trade flows.
We also examine the dynamics of brokerage, including the ways that brokers find solutions or
‘fixes’ to problems but rarely resolve them, and how brokers adapt to (or fail to adapt to)
moments of rupture in fluid trading environments. Finally, we reveal the effects of brokerage in
terms of how brokers cumulatively shape the ways in which states and markets function in
marginal frontier and borderland environments. Though their agency is circumscribed, brokers
are not merely mediators; they play a role in transforming and reconfiguring connections and
relationships within political and market systems.
Secondly, we aim to contribute to wider theoretical debates about brokerage as a lens for
conceptualising and analysing the dynamics of illicit trade in borderland environments. We
show that paying careful attention to the edges tells us important things about the whole; the
lives of seemingly marginal borderland brokers provide a privileged vantage point for under-
standing the wider political economy of (licit and illicit) trading systems, how they change over
time and their distributional effects within and across borders.
In the next section we introduce key terms and provide a brief overview of the emerging
literature on brokers and brokerage. We then set out our analytical approach to this phe-
nomenon, which is followed by illustrative case studies of political and trading brokers in
Afghanistan. We conclude with some reflections on the theoretical and empirical implications
of this analysis.

118 DOI: 10.4324/9781003043645-9

 Trading spaces

Frontiers and borderlands: spaces of innovation and transformation

In this chapter our focus is on a particular kind of trading space: borderlands and frontier regions
that straddle the margins of one or more states. Borderlands are classically understood as zones
straddling an international border, whilst frontiers are more fuzzy political spaces, marking
zones of transition between different centres of power and regulation. Both are liminal spaces of
cultural overlap and hybridity.
Many of today’s borderlands bear the traces of earlier frontier dynamics and the legacies of
empires, and these dynamics persist beneath the mosaic of nation states (O’Dowd, 2012).
Rather than disappearing, frontiers tend to wax and wane in boom and bust cycles, linked to an
amalgam of factors including the retreat and expansion of states and markets, the shifting dy-
namics of conflict, crises of accumulation in metropolitan centers, the building of infrastructure,
and shifts in global and regional commodity markets (licit and illicit). ‘Frontier effects’ and
‘border effects’ may coexist and interact in the same marginal spaces, with the salience of each
shifting over time, as shown in our case studies below.
Trading routes are often grafted onto longstanding regional networks and connections that
preceded statebuilding, for example the Silk Route in Central Asia and the ancient trade routes
crisscrossing the Sahara (McDougal & Scheele, 2012). Border delineation did not so much
interrupt these regional networks of interdependence as restructure them, leading to smuggling
networks and semi-licit trade and new regional power centres that were dependent on borders.
Border zones are often ‘sensitive spaces’ (Cons, 2016), absorbing a disproportionate amount
of the time and attention of central state elites. They are frequently places where state authority
and sovereignty are contested, access to the means of violence is fragmented and the existence
of cross border networks and flows create a centrifugal dynamic that counters the centripetal
forces of statebuilding.
Therefore, in studying the margins of the state, we are not looking at disconnected or
lagging regions, but often spaces that are central to processes of statebuilding and development.
We are interested here in developing a relational approach, which moves beyond methodo-
logical nationalism, recognizing transnational and subnational processes that are often rendered
invisible in state-centric analysis. This approach reveals borderlands as places of radical un-
certainty and rapid change, where peripheral elites and borderland populations are constantly
improvising and innovating in order to survive and sometimes prosper.

Borderlands as trading spaces

Borders generate a ‘spatial discount’ for those who are buying, selling or employing to derive
profits by exploiting differences between regulatory regimes on both sides of a border. In this
sense, rather than acting as constraints, borders are fields of opportunity. The intensity of
economic flows and relations may be greater across the border than with the metropolitan
centre within a state. Although smugglers may resist or subvert the state’s regulatory efforts,
they are rarely revolutionaries. The relationship between smugglers and state officials is more
symbiotic in nature, often involving a high degree of collusion (Goodhand, 2020; Nugent,
2002; Taggliacozza, 2005).
Border regimes can be understood as interactive orders involving movement and counter
movement on the part of those who police and those who transgress various border controls
(Goodhand & Meehan, 2018). This takes place not only at the border itself. The policing and
enforcement of border regimes can occur through multiple agents in various locations – from

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the border guards, customs officials, and drones situated at airports, ports, and land borders, to
financial regulators and migration officials based in capital cities.
Borderlands have their own particular ecosystems of constraint and opportunity, linked to
their specific histories and geographies. Two factors are critical in structuring the dynamics of
borderland trade: first, the type and level of state presence at the border; and second, the depth
or degree of inequality at the border (Zartman, 2010). According to More (2011), ‘extreme
borders,’ characterized by large economic asymmetries, exhibit particular ‘pathologies’ – in-
cluding heightened levels of militarization and violence, illicit drug trafficking, and people
smuggling. Rather than promoting convergence and integration that might help alleviate in-
equalities, the more powerful state typically does the opposite, which has the paradoxical effect
of steepening these pathologies further, thus increasing the stakes, incentives and risk premiums
associated with illicit cross-border smuggling, as shown in our case studies below.
The distinction between formal/legal and informal/illicit trade may carry little meaning in
the borderlands; indeed, in border zones we see ambivalent and unstable encounters between
legal and illegal, state and non-state, smugglers and state agents. Legal and illegal forms of trade
can be understood as a continuum of possibilities that traders can flexibly use as part of a trading
portfolio.
Both smugglers and state agents have an economic interest in controlling lucrative cross-
border trading corridors and choke points, especially when there are asymmetric regulatory
regimes on both sides. For example, as an unregulated, high-risk, high-opportunity environ-
ment, Goma is a crucial node in the network of East African trading corridors (Lamarque,
2014). Profits generated from this business, however, are invested on the other side of the
border, where Congolese businessmen build their houses in the more secure and regulated
Rwandese state space (ibid). As such, government positions at the border, such as police chiefs,
customs officials, and border guards are extremely lucrative and cost significant sums to pur-
chase. In order to recoup the initial outlay, officials often rely on rents extracted from the
movement of commodities and people across the border. This in turn incentivises the pro-
liferation of smuggling routes away from formal border crossings; for instance, on the
Guatemala-Honduras border there are 15 formal crossing points but more than 100 informal
ones. These ‘blind spots’ (puntos ciegos) are unofficial border crossings that central government
officials have little capacity to control (ICG, 2014).

Traders, brokers and borderland brokerage

Protracted conflict, illicit economies, and the presence of an international border alongside
multiple internal borders demarcated by social, political, religious cleavages create a demand for
brokers in borderland and frontier regions.
A broker can be defined as someone who acts as an intermediary, playing the role of a go-
between or fixer. Brokers occupy a space ‘between handshakes and contracts,’ where formal
institutions cannot be trusted and where informality and social capital are key to getting things
done – for example, processing conflicts, distributing resources, and accessing rights and en-
titlements. Brokers are ‘network specialists’ whose ability to straddle multiple knowledge sys-
tems and life-worlds enables them to act as gatekeepers across various social ‘synapses’ or ‘choke
points’ (James, 2011; Wolf, 1956) and in doing so “transmit, direct, filter, receive, code, de-
code, and interpret messages” across these interstitial spaces (Meehan & Plonski, 2017, p. 5).
The term ‘broker’ is rarely used self-referentially, as most people prefer not to define
themselves as such (Bierschenk et al., 2002). In fact, in many contexts it is a pejorative term; for
example, in South Asia brokers or ‘dalals’ are seen as self interested, extractive, dissembling

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figures (Goodhand & Walton, 2020). Notwithstanding this perception, brokers are ubiquitous
in many contexts, particularly borderland regions. They are ambiguous and Janus-faced figures
who serve different constituencies, linking national and subnational political systems, or trading
networks on two sides of a border. As Wolf (1956) notes, they stand guard over key synapses, or
points of friction, acting as both the lubricant and the grit in the political or market system.
To develop further this broad characterisation of brokerage, three points about the posi-
tionality, dynamics and effects of brokerage can be highlighted.
First, in terms of their positionality, brokers aim to occupy ‘deal spaces’ or points of friction
within political, economic or social systems that require and create opportunities for some form
of intermediation and negotiation. In contexts marked by liminality and illegality, brokers fill a
void created by the absence of formal regulatory mechanisms to allocate resources, process
disputes and make claims. Brokers can play the role of connecting otherwise inaccessible spaces
and performing tasks that formal actors are unwilling or unable to do.
Borderlands are places where the local and global collide and become entangled in complex
ways. Brokers can be understood as ‘friction specialists’ who mediate, and reconfigure, re-
lationships among communities, armed groups, state entities and businesses, regional patrons,
and legal and illegal activities (Meehan & Plonski, 2017). Particular communities have his-
torically played outsized brokerage roles – for example the Pashtuns of eastern Afghanistan and
the Baluch on the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. These groups are both highly local
and transregional at the same time. They are adept at facilitating border crossings and gate-
keeping. Their identities are bound up with notions and practices of flexible citizenship and
operating among different normative orders.
The positionality of brokers varies according to where the demand for brokerage comes
from – the extent to which brokers are beholden to the central state or societal groups in the
borderlands – and their location within wider systems of governance and markets. Apex brokers
occupy key synapses that shape the overall balance of power or distribution of resources within
political settlements. This tends to be the case in the most salient borderland regions, con-
necting ‘elites that matter’ in the centre and the periphery. Tertiary brokers sit further down the
political system or value chain – either within more marginalised borderlands or between less
salient and lucrative internal border regions, rather than the critical interfaces between centre
and periphery or across an international border (Goodhand & Walton, 2020).
Second, in terms of the dynamics of brokerage, the ambiguity and contradictions of brokers
is bound up with their role as fixers who address problems, but rarely fully resolve them.
Meehan and Plonski (2017) use the term ‘brokerage fix’ to describe the dynamic through which
brokers perpetually engineer solutions to problems that are always temporary and provisional,
and lead to new sets of contradictions and challenges, which in turn require new brokerage
fixes. Successful brokers are able to reinvent themselves continually in order to occupy and
monopolise deal spaces and to remain relevant. Some experience temporary success in this role
but are unable to adapt and are marginalised, whilst others may graduate from being a broker to
becoming a key decision-maker at the centre of power. This leads to questions, when looking
at individual lives, about whether brokerage can be understood as a long-term career or a short-
term transitional phase.
Third, in terms of the effects of brokerage, there is a tendency to view brokers as
ephemeral, shadowy characters who adapt to change, but are rarely presented as the agents of
change. Yet they are more than simply ‘intermediaries’ facilitating linkages and flows; they are
also ‘mediators,’ with a degree of autonomy, agency and power, enabling them to shape,
regulate, and filter flows (Bierschenk et al., 2002; Latour, 2005; Mosse & Lewis, 2006). They
enable – and rework – deals among communities, companies and state entities, between

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peripheries and centres within nations and across international borders (Meehan & Plonski,
2017). Therefore brokerage may have cumulatively structural effects on wider systems of state
and market power. Trajectories of change in the borderlands are rarely gradual and linear, but
marked by moments of rupture or ‘punctuated equilibrium’ in which there are major shifts in
the dynamics of brokerage and underlying political settlements. The agency of brokers may be
inflated during such moments of flux. As we explore further below, apex brokers can reshape
political settlements, whilst trade brokers can set in motion new rounds of investment and
development in frontier boomtowns.

The political economy of borderland trading and brokerage networks

Borderland trade brokers mediate, filter and channel flows of commodities and resources across
borders. Their power is derived from occupying key choke points or places of friction in
transnational trading systems. This allows them to generate economic rents, which can in turn
be translated into political power. Where high trade profits combine with inconsistent state
control, cross-border networks can become alternative systems of power (Dobler, 2016). In
Afghanistan for example, when the Taliban came to power in the mid-1990s, they were backed
by powerful Afghan traders based in Peshawar, Pakistan, whose interests were undermined by
the instability of warlord-dominated Afghanistan.
Border zone economies involve a multitude of actors (traders, transporters, brokers, drivers,
loaders, processors, harvesters, farmers, miners, hotel and warehouse owners, government of-
ficials – customs officials, border police, military, intelligence agencies – commanders, rebel
groups, militias), and complex assemblages and brokerage arrangements, which bring together
transport, warehousing and logistics, labour regimes, financing and credit relations, technolo-
gical innovation and market adaptation, information collection, data analysis and market re-
search. Trading networks are highly adaptive and innovative, having been ‘stress tested’ by years
of conflict, political fluidity and frequent economic shocks in contexts of radical uncertainty.
Trading routes or corridors – understood here as connected and coordinated bundles of
transport, logistics, infrastructure, and services that connect centres of economic activity
(Hagman & Steppatat, 2016) – are continually shifting. These trading routes vary in terms of
their political and economic salience, the actors involved and the governance and brokering
relations in which they are embedded. Building on Dobler (2016) a tentative taxonomy of
trading corridors or pathways is presented in Table 9.1, each being associated with different
types of brokers and brokering dynamics.
A number of observations flow out of this typology, which are developed further in the
empirical material below.
First, across this typology of corridors there is a need to unpack and analyse power relations
within trade networks, how governance relations and forms of rent extraction and taxation
occur at different points in the value chain and the role of brokers in these processes. For
example, containerised goods on major roads across official crossing points (Type 4) are likely to
have more formal state involvement, more hierarchical relations, higher barriers to entry and
greater involvement of apex brokers. In contrast, informal/illicit/semi-licit trade across un-
official crossings along unpaved roads and tracks is likely to involve more players, lower barriers
to entry, greater involvement of tertiary brokers, less formal involvement of the state, parti-
cularly central state actors – and perhaps may also be more egalitarian and redistributive than
containerized, formal trade (Mansfield, 2020a, 2020b). Therefore, we can analyse trading
networks in terms of whether they enforce strong hierarchical ties, or rather whether they
function through horizontal, diffuse and weak ties.

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Table 9.1 Typology of trading corridors

Pathway type Description Key actors, beneficiaries and brokers

Type 1 Small-scale informal crossings on tracks Local communities, local elites, and non-
in mountain passes and deserts; informal state actors’ small-scale markets, hotels,
trading in maritime spaces (e.g., drug and tea shops, small-scale brokers,
smuggling in dhows along the Makran women involved in petty trade.
coast of Pakistan).
Type 2 Large-scale informal/illegal crossings: Armed groups, government officials
large-scale movement of goods along (unofficially), powerful business leaders
unofficial routes/border crossings that are and brokers, communities in border
not formally regulated or sanctioned areas involved in the production and
(e.g., militarised transhipment of drugs transportation of goods.
from Afghanistan across the desert spaces
of Nimroz).
Type 3 Licit and illicit goods, transported Customs officials, local government
through official crossings on tarmac actors, local strong men, powerful
roads: movement of goods and people business leaders and brokers; frontier
across formally sanctioned border boomtowns.
crossings that may involve adhering to
regulations governing these crossings
(e.g., border checks, paperwork, etc.) or
efforts to transgress regulations and
checks to move goods illegally by using
formal crossings and infrastructure (e.g.,
smuggling of drugs and gold through
Torkham on the Afghan-Pakistan
border).
Type 4 Major transnational (in some cases Foreign capital and national political
transcontinental) infrastructure elites; ‘centres’ more than ‘peripheries’;
corridors: including trade and energy regional powers (particularly China,
corridors and maritime and airports Iran, and the Gulf).
connected to infrastructure and logistics
hubs in the Gulf (e.g., the China-Pakistan
Economic Corridor within China’s Belt
and Road Initiative; the Chabahar port in
Iran; the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline
project).

Second, the trading networks vary in terms of their level of (in)formality and the role of
information. In illicit networks information tends to be highly fragmented and lower-level
actors are only partially sighted – they are only aware of their sections of the corridor, and other
nodes in the smuggling network may be unknown to them. However, it is likely that apex
brokers are able to see the bigger picture and have privileged access to information along
different points of the chain; in the terminology of network analysis, they have greater ‘be-
tweenness centrality.’
Third, each route is associated with different types and levels of friction. Type 4 aspires to
low-friction or frictionless trade, with fewer intermediaries and flows of goods in containers

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running through official border crossings. Theoretically, where there is frictionless trade, then
there is no need for brokers, but in the ‘real world’ it is difficult to find such situations. In Type 4
corridors there are fewer points of friction and power is likely to be concentrated amongst a
small group of apex brokers, often located in metropolitan centres rather than at the border
itself. Conversely, Type 1 flows involve multiple points of friction and consequently multiple
points of rent extraction and brokerage. In many ways this makes them more redistributive than
Type 4 corridors, in which a greater proportion of accumulated profits tend to flow to the
centres of power rather than the border regions. Border hardening and the investment in
infrastructure and technologies to manage, filter and funnel flows are likely to increase this
dynamic of directing the proceeds of trade towards the centre rather than the borderlands. It
also shifts the pattern of trade flows across borders from a capillary action to a funnel action, and
as explored in the life histories below, this means that tertiary brokers either get pushed out of
‘the game’ or they need to reinvent themselves as apex brokers.
Fourth, as noted, brokerage relations and dynamics vary across these four corridors. They are
associated with different kinds of ‘deal spaces’ involving differing barriers to entry and different
kinds of brokers. We need more information about the extent to which brokers are generalists
or specialists – do they focus on particular kinds of commodities and/or in particular types of
corridors? How do brokers respond to moments of rupture? How do they reinvent themselves
to find new ‘brokerage fixes’ and what new sets of contradictions do these fixes produce?
Studying the complex life histories of individual brokers can help answer these questions.

Case studies – the life histories of brokers2

Context
The border between the Afghan province of Nangarhar and Pakistan is mountainous and rugged
to the east and south (Figure 9.1), with the Pashtun tribes straddling both sides of the Durand
line, which marks the international border (Barfield, 2010; Grötzbach, 1990). Nangarhar is a
politically salient border province with strong connections to Kabul, as well as across the border
with Pakistan. The main border crossing is at Torkham, the gateway to the Khyber Pass, which
cuts through the Spin Ghar mountains. Highway A01 is the key transport corridor, running
through Torkham and connecting Peshawar in Pakistan with Jalalabad, the provincial centre
and Kabul, the national capital – and since the US intervention of 2001 it also became a key
transit route for NATO supplies. In addition, there are multiple informal border crossing
points, which have historically been key smuggling routes for a range of licit and illicit com-
modities (Mansfield, 2020a). Trade is central to the Nangarhar’s economy and in 2018 imports
and exports through Torkham generated $119 million in taxes (ibid).
Nimroz, on the other hand, is a remote frontier region of vast deserts with a historically open
border with Iran and Pakistan. Unlike Jalalabad, Ziranj (Figure 9.1) was a neglected adminis-
trative outpost in a province inhabited mostly by the Baloch, a large but marginalised minority
that straddle the borderlands of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan (Boedeker, 2012; Larson, 2010,
Titus, 1996). Arbitrage has been central to the local economy – trading networks are grafted
onto long standing regional circuits of exchange, which were strengthened in the war years,
when mostly Afghan Baluch and Hazara communities resettled in larger numbers on the Iranian
side, establishing supply lines to support the anti-communist insurgency in Afghanistan as well
as flows of remittances to family members remaining in the country (Kutty, 2014). These
connections then provided the basis for smuggling narcotics and economic migrants into Iran
and beyond, as well as bringing diesel from Iran into Afghanistan (Mansfield, 2020b).

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Figure 9.1 Map of Afghanistan, highlighting locations referred to in the case illustrations
Source: Alcis.

Geopolitically, the border region has become more salient as Afghanistan, Iran and India have
made investments in infrastructure to increase trade flows including the construction of route
606, which has become a major trading corridor linking Chabahar port in Iran with Ziranj and
the Herat-Kandahar highway (ibid).
Like many other borderlands, border delineation divided geographically and demo-
graphically contiguous spaces and this separation was amplified by statebuilding processes on
both sides of the border. The wars of the 1980s and 1990s interrupted these efforts, and
Afghanistan’s eastern and western borderlands reverted to their historical status as open frontier
regions, creating new spaces and opportunities for trading networks with low barriers to entry
and multiple flows.
However, since 2001 neighbouring states, and to some extent the Afghan state, have sought
to impose stronger border controls linked to concerns about terrorism and illicit narcotics, and a
desire to increase official trade flows. This has led to investments in border security including
fencing and border walls and infrastructure such as road building, customs posts and ware-
housing facilities. The ‘infrastructural power’ of the state (Mann, 1984) now reaches up to the
borderline and both borderlands have become more regulated, closing off the multitude of
informal crossing points along the borderline and channelling trade flows and movements of
people through official crossing points. According to our typology of pathways, the main
purpose of border hardening was to enhance licit trade flows along Type 3 and 4 pathways and
to close off Type 1 and 2 flows – through enhanced border regulation and policing. These
changes drastically reduced informal, largely open-access trade, professionalising and vertically
integrating both legal and illegal access to the cross-border trading economy (Koehler et al,
2021; Mansfield, 2020a, 2020b). As explored further below, the dynamics of brokerage shifted
accordingly.
The case studies below are drawn from a series of life history interviews with borderland
brokers and their associates conducted in Nangarhar and Nimroz between August and

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November 2020. They illustrate the positionality, dynamics and effects of brokerage: the process by
which apex brokers come to dominate trading networks, what functions they serve, and how
their positions as brokers spilled over into other aspects of conflict resolution and mediation. To
protect the safety of these individuals, their names have been changed. Where appropriate,
minor details have been changed or omitted to obscure their identities.

From insurgent to mediator: emergence of an apex broker in Nangarhar

The first case study looks at the life history of Haji M. Khan, an influential broker and tribal
mediator. Haji M. Khan was born and grew up in a small village in a mountainous district
bordering Pakistan in the 1950s. The district has limited agricultural land and he, like most
people, was employed in the small-scale domestic wood trade with Jalalabad (the provincial
centre) and Kabul. His family were also involved in informal cross-border trade in wood,
opium, clothes and dry fruit, transported to the Tribal Areas of Pakistan via mules and donkeys,
along Type 1 pathways and informal border crossings. Contacts and exchanges across the
porous border with Pakistan were more frequent and important to Haji M. Khan and his
community than to Kabul or even Jalalabad. While along this part of the border the dominant
tribes on the Afghan and Pakistani side were different,3 they had agreed on mutual protection
agreements (lokhae). Haji M. Khan enjoyed privileged access since part of his lineage, as well as
his eventual in-laws, were from the Afridi tribe on the other side of the border.
Haji M. Khan’s cross-border relations provided a lifeline when he, and many other residents
of the border district were forced to leave their homes during the initial phase of communist
rule and subsequent Soviet occupation. His family settled in relative safety on the Pakistani side
of the border while he engaged in jihad against the communist government, eventually com-
manding a front of some 50 armed mujahids. Pakistani support and supplies (with US backing)
helped the mujahidin to secure control over the border districts, and fighters and supplies moved
across the border along informal and constantly shifting Type 1 and 2 routes. With the collapse
of the communist government in 1991, Haji M. Khan became the commander of a newly
established army base close to the Khyber Pass and district administrator for the mujahidin
government. Here he became adept at managing and processing conflicts brought to the at-
tention of the district government through tribal elders and their jirgas (tribal or community
gatherings of elders or ‘white beards’ who take decisions on issues of collective concern). If jirga
decisions were not adhered to, Haji M. Khan, as representative of the mujahedeen government,
provided enforcement.
When the Taliban came to power in 1994, Haji M. Khan fled with his family back across the
border to Pakistan. However, the Taliban imprisoned his close relatives and pressured him to
surrender his weapons. Eventually, a delegation of tribal elders negotiated his free return and the
handover of weapons and vehicles. According to Haji M. Khan, about 100 elders from the
Pakistan side and 80 elders from the Afghan side accompanied him when he returned, to
guarantee his safety. After being disarmed, the Taliban released Haji M. Khan’s kin but con-
tinued to monitor his movements. Eventually he decided to return with his family to Pakistan
and join the anti-Taliban “Northern Alliance” resistance under one of the main commanders of
the Eastern Provinces. When these efforts failed and his commander was arrested, Haji M. Khan
settled in Pakistan and focused on building his reputation as a tribal mediator as well as his trade
and transportation business between Afghanistan and Peshawar. During this period the drugs
trade expanded and the district became a key centre and trading route with the growth of an
opium bazaar and many drug processing laboratories.

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After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Haji M. Khan returned with his family to Afghanistan
and continued to gain recognition as an important broker in Nangarhar. Two factors helped
him: first, his jihadi credentials among the Northern Alliance commanders, who returned to
power after the fall of the Taliban. Second, his knowledge of, and high standing with, the tribes
on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. Between 2002 and 2019 he was appointed district
governor (woliswol) multiple times across Nangarhar, many of them key border districts. His
modus operandi was to work with, and help support, an often fragmented system of tribal re-
presentation, decision-making and law enforcement. He played the role of mediator and
regulator of conflicts that could not be resolved at a lower level through jirgas. He was viewed as
an honest broker, who could authorize lower-level mediators to intervene on his behalf.
Brokerage involved navigating hybrid forms of authority among multiple sovereigns, including
various levels of government, the Taliban, local strongmen, militias, and in recent years, the
Islamic State.
As a district governor, Haji M. Khan attempted to engineer a system of tribal representation
that – as he saw it – re-connected to a traditional form of tribal governance based on jirgas, a
system that had been broken by civil war and anti-tribal policies of Taliban rule, and needed
proactive ‘fixing.’ He selected four elders from each tribe to liaise with the government. In
some districts he managed to set up tribal counter-insurgency militias and secured state funding
for them. He also used the re-invented tribal structure to agree and enforce rules on how to
prevent and sanction collaboration with insurgents and finally how to deal with social, political
and economic conflicts within and between tribal segments.

I established a tribal committee and decided that we won’t let the enemies of
Afghanistan such as Talib, ISIS, thieves, and criminals come to the district, and they
accepted and signed the treaty that if anyone provides shelter to above insurgents or
enemies, we will burn his house and he will be fined 10 Lakhs Rs. We made this
decision with consensus. (Paraphrased from interview)

As a foundation for this strategy, Haji M. Khan leveraged economic wealth to build social
capital through networks of personalised trust. This was converted into political power and
patronage, which further enhanced his economic standing. He understood that political success
and longevity in a violent and competitive environment depended upon building social
standing as a just and effective mediator. A reputation for hospitality was underpinned by an
‘infrastructure’ of high-profile guesthouses across the province where he housed and fed people
seeking his advice (langar khana). Furthermore, he provided mediation and conflict solving
services – including delegating issues to other reliable bodies or individuals, without charge
(e.g., to jirgas specialising in smuggling-related conflicts).4 Finally, Haji M. Khan used his in-
fluence and official positions to facilitate the illicit re-export of goods imported from Pakistan as
transit goods back into Pakistan via major and well-organised smuggling routes.

Thousands of people used to be engaged in the transit business. When I was district
governor, I arranged these transit commodities very well. This trade was arranged by
cross-border communities [that] cooperate with us. When there was a problem, we
were jointly solving the trade problems on both sides of the border. Now the transit
commodities import and export pathway is blocked by Pakistan. […] I gathered the
tribal elders, youth and influential individuals. Thousands of people are now un-
employed and the way is still blocked. (Paraphrased from interview).

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Haji M. Khan showed considerable skills in diversifying income and risks, and in securing his
long-term interests by building social, political and material capital. For example, he managed
to secure elected positions for two of his immediate kin in the national and provincial councils.
A third close relative is thought to play a key role in the cross-border trade business, aided by
the political cover of the other two.
Eventually, Haji M. Khan was successful in re-establishing tribal representation in his home
district, earning a widespread reputation and some recognition even in Kabul. He continued to
play a significant role even after falling out with Kabul appointees in the province and losing his
job as district governor. At the time of the fieldwork, he was still regarded as an apex broker and
problem solver in his district; tribal militias loyal to him manned checkpoints and informally
controlled access to the district undisturbed by the Afghan National Police. The researchers
found a mostly idle district administration, while the guesthouses of the broker were over-
crowded with people seeking the mediation, support and advice of Haji M. Khan to solve their
problems.5 However, his position was less stable and according to one of his allies interviewed,
his interference in Kabul politics had caused him to lose his political backing there, leaving him
in a now more precarious position.

A small-scale fuel trader strikes it big: brokerage opportunities in Nimroz

We turn now to a cross-border fuel smuggler in the South-West of Afghanistan. This is a story
about how a small fuel trader from a minority group uses his cross-cutting networks to leverage
new opportunities in a fast changing border zone, working his way up from being a tertiary
broker to becoming a key apex broker in regional trading networks.
Haji Aziz, now in his forties, comes from a modest family of shopkeepers and craftsmen,
with a multi-ethnic background, presenting himself as a mixture of “Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik,
and Baloch.” When the Taliban were in power, his family moved to Nimroz and he worked in
shops at the main provincial bazaar of Ghor Ghori, refilling and cleaning fuel barrels smuggled
across the border from Iran, earning extra money by filtering and selling excess or waste diesel
on the side. Policing of the Iranian border was patchy and uneven at this time, but conversely
the demand for fuel and trading infrastructure was low. However, whilst working in the main
bazaar, Haji Aziz developed relationships with a range of traders and smugglers, including drug
traders connected to the Taliban, who were concentrated in Ghor Ghori bazaar. According to
one source, Haji Aziz made his initial capital from drug smuggling; in 2001, when a Coalition
air raid destroyed the market and forced the Taliban to abandon the area, Haji Aziz was one of
the few local traders who reportedly stayed behind and appropriated sizable amounts of
abandoned opium stores.
During the first decade after the fall of the Taliban government, licit and illicit cross-border
trade via Nimroz province increased dramatically and Ziranj became a frontier boom town
(Drugs & (Dis)order, 2020). Haji Aziz became one of the main importers of fuel, and subse-
quently cars, into the province. His business grew rapidly as he started importing fuel directly
from Iran. He developed friendly and mutually beneficial relations with government and border
officials and capitalised on his existing inter-tribal and cross-border contacts. A former business
contact, and later competitor, explained in an interview that Haji Aziz’s business activities
extended to Kandahar, where he forged strong relations with some of the most influential
people in Southern Afghanistan, including indirect access to one of the former President’s half-
brothers, Ahmed Wali Karzai (then head of the Provincial Council).
However, over the past ten years, trade relations with Iran changed and Haji Aziz was forced
to adapt his business. First, Iran tightened its grip on the border and brought the many informal

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crossings under control. Second, international sanctions sent the Iranian Rial into free fall,
introducing high inflationary risks to cross-border trade. Finally, a significant part of the fuel
business shifted to other provinces further north, where Iran established large fuel storage fa-
cilities as a new hub to distribute fuel across Afghanistan.
Haji Aziz diversified his cross-border business, investing more in domestic trade infra-
structure, such as car showrooms and pump stations, in a number of provinces. He also le-
veraged connections with the provincial government and customs services so as to keep
importing fuel and cars at reduced custom rates. In addition, he established himself as a service
provider for other cross-border traders, facilitating and mediating their relations with both
government offices and the parallel Taliban administration. He provides office space for some
170 licenced commissionkars at the official border crossing in Milak, who facilitate official as well
as informal customs declarations for traders crossing the border (legal goods flow for the most
part from Iran into Afghanistan). Haji Aziz’s subordinates provide reduced rates in return for
informal service fees. He also controls the main scales that weigh incoming cargo, and reduced
net weights are regularly negotiated and certified against a fee. For a time, Haji Aziz was also
authorised by Taliban and traders’ unions to collect the unofficial but consistently enforced
Taliban tax on goods crossing the province, exchanging the official customs tax slip with a tax
slip recognized by the Taliban. He had negotiated this unofficial but formalised agreement to
streamline official and informal taxation issues and make cross-border trade more predictable for
the traders.
However, balancing commercial imperatives with the interests of powerful governmental
and shadow-governmental actors involved serious risks and difficult setbacks. First, he lost his
access to political protection in Kandahar when his link to the presidential family was killed and
the newly appointed police chief demanded his share in undeclared profits made from the car
business. Around 2019, Haji Aziz lost his main patron within the provincial Taliban leadership
of Nimroz in a drone attack and was almost immediately summoned by his successor, who
suspected him of not disclosing fully the profits made from tax collection on behalf of the
Taliban. In both cases, he was forced to pay a hefty fine – revealing that even the most in-
fluential brokers must cope with a high degree of uncertainty and unexpected rent extraction.
Ultimately the power of the armed executive (of both the state and shadow state) trumped the
financial power of traders and business people.
Despite these setbacks, there remains a high demand for the mediation skills of Haji Aziz
from traders and their associates. According to Haji Aziz, he stays out of politics: “I solve almost
80–100 conflicts per month and I don’t want any money from anyone.” He says that, “people
trust me, so I should serve them.” He also invests profits into numerous public welfare activities
in Nimroz, evidence of his significant and enduring influence in the province.

Conclusions
This chapter has focused on the role of brokers and brokerage in the context of cross-border
smuggling and trading networks. By looking at two personal biographies, we aimed to illu-
minate the details and complexity of individual lives, whilst revealing wider processes of change
linked to border hardening and shifting regional trading systems and political networks.
Firstly, in terms of their positionality, the two brokers have very different backgrounds and
biographies, though they share some common characteristics. Both have become significant
political and economic brokers, starting off as tertiary brokers, but over time graduating into
apex brokers – though neither is sufficiently influential to be involved in brokering trade along
Type 4 corridors, and both have been adversely affected and had to adapt to border closures.

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Though their career trajectories follow a similar arc, their sources of legitimacy and power are
quite different. Haji M. Khan is embedded in the tribal systems of the borderlands; he melded
his tribal credentials and ‘architecture’ of hospitality with his jihadi history and his ongoing
relationship with ‘men of violence’ so as to become a credible broker mediating and managing
conflicts.
Haji Aziz, in contrast, is neither embedded in a tribal system, nor self-identifies as a particular
ethnicity; instead, he positions himself as someone with a hybrid identity who can mediate
across and among different social and political groupings. Unlike Haji M. Khan, he is primarily
an economic player who lacks a jihadi history or ‘violence credentials.’ Although this can make
him vulnerable – as for example when he was arrested in Kandahar – it also means he is able to
act as a credible mediator with the Taliban, unlike Haji M. Khan. Like Khan, however, he is
attuned to the importance of social standing and the redistributive role of brokers, as shown by
his support of social works and welfare in Ziranj.
Secondly, there are similarities as well as differences in the brokerage dynamics revealed in the
two life histories. Both are living and operating in contexts of radical uncertainty – like all
borderlanders living in contexts of fluidity and flux, marked by moments of rupture – including
the shifts in conflict dynamics linked to different phases of the war, shifting political regimes,
changes in border security and management, and economic shocks.
What marks them out from the wider population is their ability to adapt and improvise
so that they come to occupy key ‘deal spaces.’ These spaces differ and so do the brokerage
fixes that they offer. Haji M. Khan is an ‘embedded broker’ (Meehan & Plonski, 2017) in
the sense that his value as a broker lies in his ‘betweenness centrality’ within the tribal system.
Haji Aziz is a ‘liaison broker’ (ibid) whose value lies in his ability to straddle social as well as
territorial borders and boundaries. The fixes that Haji M. Khan provides are primarily related to
localized conflicts and state-society relations. Haji Aziz’s brokerage fixes are primarily con-
cerned with the management and flows of trade, and this depends on an ability to position
himself above, or at a distance from, the political fray. Both embody the agency and ingenuity
of borderland brokers, but they are also vulnerable characters, only as powerful as their last ‘fix.’
The power of Haji M. Khan, for example, appears to be on the decline, linked perhaps to the
growing strength of the Taliban, shifts in political coalitions in Kabul and Jalalabad, and the
effects of border hardening on local trade networks.
Thirdly, as the last point indicates, brokerage effects may be transitory and ephemeral, when
viewed from the perspective of one broker or one brokerage fix. However, if we see brokerage
in more systematic terms, as central to the way that states and markets are managed and
‘performed’ in the borderlands, then we can see how brokers may over time – certainly within
the lifetimes of our two brokers – have significant structural effects. Haji Aziz, for example, is
one of many traders and brokers in Nimroz who has contributed to a remarkable transformation
of Ziranj from a frontier outpost to a boom town that has attracted internal investment, sig-
nificant in-migration and increased governmental interventions and programmes. Brokerage
has been central to this process of unruly frontier development, based on agglomerations of
illegality, including drugs and people trafficking, drug use and processing, and other forms of
illicit trade. In Nangarhar, brokers like Haji M. Khan have been central to the post-2001
statebuilding (and counterinsurgency) project – embedded brokers have played a critical role in
extending the footprint of the state, managing coalitions and distributing rents amongst national
and local political elites. As a major trading and political hub, Nangarhar is a prize fought over
with particular intensity, leading to a constant process of political unsettlement and churning
politics. Brokerage has in many ways entered the DNA of states and markets and is central to
they way both function and their distributional consequences.

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This brings us to our final point, that studying brokers on the margins can tell us much about
how the markets and the wider political system works. The personal biographies of Haji M.
Khan and Haji Aziz are inseparable from the wider spatial and political biographies of the
frontier regions. Studying the lives of these individuals brings out the complex temporalities,
socio-spatial relations and power dynamics of border zones, and it powerfully demonstrates
how these regions are far from marginal or lagging zones; instead, they are best understood as
transformative spaces and laboratories of change. Studying borders and brokers brings into focus
the webs of connections, the points of friction and the fluid relations within trading systems.
Our case studies hint at these processes and dynamics, but there is scope, and an urgent need, for
further comparative research on this ‘missing middle’ level of analysis that explores the roles,
dynamics and effects of borderland brokers. We have provided a tentative comparison of
borderland brokers within different borderland spaces. there is further exciting work to be
done, however, which develops in more systematic ways this comparative approach across
regions, historical periods and types of licit/illicit flows. This opens up a range of questions yet
to be addressed fully about the agency of brokers, how smuggling networks adapt to moments
of rupture, the distributional effects of these shifts, and the impacts of peripheral trading
economies on power relations and economic development within metropolitan centres.

Notes
1 This chapter draws from fieldwork funded by UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund [Award
Reference: ES/P011543/1: ‘Drugs & (dis)order: building sustainable peacetime economies in the
aftermath of war’] and conducted by the Afghan NGO Organisation for Sustainable Development and
Research (OSDR). The project seeks to generate new evidence on how to transform illicit drug
economies into peace economies. The chapter also draws upon material and writing derived from an
ESRC-funded research project ‘Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Sri Lanka and Nepal: War
to Peace Transitions viewed from the margins’ (Ref: ES/M011046/1). We are grateful to our field
researchers in OSDR who conducted the interviews underpinning the case studies in this chapter, as
well as to the editors Florian Weigand and Max Gallien for their invaluable comments.
2 The case studies are based on 24 in-depth life history interviews in both provinces as well as 740 more
focused guideline interviews on licit and illicit economic activities (cf. Drugs and (Dis)order, 2020).
Specifically on brokerage, our partner OSDR conducted three interviews with the broker and two of
his associates in Nangarhar in August 2020 and seven interviews with the broker and his associates in
Nimroz in October and November 2020. In Nangarhar, the associates were tribal elders who have
known the broker over a long period of time; one of them was a former sub-commander of the
broker. In Nimroz the associates were former business partners and competitors as well as people
providing or receiving services of the broker in the context of cross-border trade.
3 The Afghan-Pakistan border often separates the same tribes or sub-tribes, but not in this particular
location.
4 According to one interviewee:

Haji M. Khan has a lot of resources like he has 26 houses and guest houses in his village […], the
province and Kabul. [… H]e has lorries, trucks and agricultural lands. His sons also make a lot of
money as they have high-paying jobs. […] Haji M. Khan represents local communities and
derives his power from [the tribes in various districts]. [… The tribes] rely on Haji M. Khan to
put an end to their disputes. Many people gather at his home [every day] and it seems like there
is wedding party. The reason why people count on him so much is because people are respected
at his home. He has been doing mediation since when he was a sincere Jihadi commander and
he keeps doing it.

5 Typically, people assemble during office hours at the district administration with all sorts of official and
informal requests. Here, access to services was clearly dominated by the broker as a one-stop-shop.

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