Contested Borderland Elite Trajectories

CBET investigates and compares how elites in contested borderlands accumulate and convert different forms of capital, navigate centre–periphery relations and shape political settlements over time. 

The project examines how borderland elites emerge, adapt and negotiate authority across different political settlements. It compares three borderland configurations: Northern Bahr el-Ghazal in South Sudan, the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and Waziristan in Pakistan. The project will produce three case-study papers accompanied by policy briefs, in addition to comparative conceptual outputs. 

The bicc team contributes the Pakistan case study, focusing on Waziristan in the Pakistan–Afghanistan borderland. Based on fieldwork, interviews and long-term engagement with the region, the research examines how changing forms of resource control reshape authority in a setting marked by layered tribal, state, military and market forms of governance. The case study explores how access to locally significant resources is negotiated, restricted and contested, and how these processes affect local patterns of representation, benefit-sharing, mobility and authority. The Pakistan case also informs policy work on conflict-sensitive extractive governance in the border districts. Contested Borderland Elite Trajectories (CBET) is funded through the Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) programme.