In this article we focus on human rights brokerage in Nepal and Sri Lanka - two countries undergoing different kinds of post-war crises, which opened spaces and demands for brokers. We zoom in on the lives of two individuals who became human rights brokers in these turbulent moments of change, and explore their positionalities, roles and effects as brokers. We seek to move beyond simplistic portrayals of such brokers as a dissembling, self-interested and professionalized class of gatekeepers, and instead focus on the brokers' narratives, understandings, and everyday practices. Based on detailed life history research, this article reveals a more complex picture of brokerage during crisis. It is argued that we need to take seriously the accounts of human rights brokers, how they understand their own positionality, actions and impacts on society. We focus on the complex temporalities surrounding human rights brokerage in post war contexts; how brokers mediate between a traumatic past (linked to human rights abuses and justice denied) and a desired future (involving restitution, access to rights and justice) in the context of an unstable present marked by violence, churning politics, and institutional inertia. Human rights brokers' ability to navigate these contested understandings of time is shaped by their own past histories and their current positionalities. Whilst being cautious not to generalize from the lives of two human rights brokers, our work offers a corrective to accounts of brokerage as a value-free, transactional activity; instead, we reveal how, for these brokers at least, ethics, values and political beliefs played an important role in driving their actions, even though declared goals were rarely met in practice.

A defining character of drugs-affected frontier regions is their dynamic instability and their boom-and-bust cycles. These are violent and disturbed landscapes, in which illicit drug economies play a transformative role. But not all frontiers are the same, and nor are the 'illicit peasantries' who inhabit the 'narco-frontier'. In this article we explore the complex dialectical relations between frontiers, drug economies, illicit peasantries and peasant politics. In doing so we develop a new comparative framework, that provides a heuristic for studying the commonalities and differences across narco-frontiers and the mechanisms behind these differences.

This article and the forum it introduces examine illicit drug crop (IDC) economies from agrarian perspectives. Examining IDCs as a group implies analysing how prohibition distinguishes them from other (licit) crops. We identify seven mechanisms through which prohibition shapes the agrarian political economy of IDCs and explore how these mechanisms and their effects generate distinctive patterns of development and political action amongst 'illicit peasantries'. We also examine connections between illicit and licit crops, including how licit crop crises and illicit crop booms intertwine. We argue that IDC economies provide a bulwark for smallholders but are by no means peasant idylls.

This article examines the dynamics of brokerage surrounding two moments of rupture (the tsunami and the end of the war) in Hambantota, a district in southern Sri Lanka and a key site of frontier development. We contrast the two development assemblages that emerged from these moments, examining how structural transformations shape the dynamics of brokerage, and how brokers mediate the effects of these transformations. By tracing the shifting fortunes of a local government broker, we reveal the changing power dynamics within these two assemblages, whilst highlighting how moments of rupture both open and shut down brokerage spaces.

Abstract This article examines post-war politics in Nepal and Sri Lanka through the prism of centre-periphery relations, drawing upon and expanding political settlements analysis. We highlight two key features neglected in existing research on political settlements: first, the spatial dimensions of these settlements – particularly the salience of frontier regions in shaping post-war orders. These ‘sensitive spaces’ continue as sites of struggle in the post-war period and frontier battles over the reordering of space and the delineation of rights, authority and citizenship are central to the emergence of post-war political settlements. Second, within these post-war frontiers we highlight the role of ‘frontier brokers’ who mediate between national and local levels of the political system. Post-war frontiers provide an opening and a demand for brokers who act as both gatekeepers and go-betweens, balancing demands from communities at the margins with the need to forge alliances and extract resources from central actors. We argue that questions of space and agency need to be foregrounded in political settlement analysis, and studying the lives of frontier brokers provides a lens for understanding shifts in political settlements and the changing relationship between the national and subnational levels of the political system at war’s end.

This article, focussing on Badakhshan province in north-east Afghanistan, explores the lifeworld of drugs and their entangled connections with people, places and things. It follows the journeys of drugs from the farmers' fields, through their various stages of transportation, storage and transformation, until they arrive at the border with Tajikistan. The paper draws upon the notion of a 'drugs assemblage' - the interweaving of plants, institutions, actors, processes and resources through which drug journeys are managed and facilitated. Drugs are embedded in a web of social relations that connect farmers, labourers, shopkeepers, smugglers, brokers and border guards. Opium is central to the production of a Braudelian geography, fragmented yet connected, of trading routes, enclaves, choke points and border crossings. Drugs have played a role in transforming the 'disturbed' landscape of this remote borderland region, into a centre of innovation and improvisation, in which alienation and precarity co-exist alongside accumulation and the pursuit of 'freedom'.

This chapter assesses the growing involvement of non-governmental organisations in the international security arena since the end of the Cold War, exploring why and how they have taken on a range of new roles under the rubric of "international security" including public diplomacy, Track Two negotiations, community reconciliation, post-conflict peacebuilding, and peace advocacy. The NGO literature tends to assume that such third party organisations are part of civil society, defined as separate to the public and private sectors. Geopolitical change prompted several important shifts in understanding and framing war, peace, and interventions. Assessments of the legitimacy and effectiveness of liberal peacebuilding and NGO roles within it varied radically. Critical theorists argued that liberal interventionism was a thinly disguised form of imperialism serving to extend and entrench Western capitalist interests in the Global South. NGO engagement in peacebuilding has been associated with broader changes in the composition and characteristics of civil society in conflict-affected regions.

The 'narco-frontier' is frequently invoked in policy and popular narratives about drugs and armed conflict. The frontier is represented as an unruly, marginal and 'ungoverned' space, a magnate for drug traffickers, rebels and migrants. These 'non state' or 'anti state' spaces are believed to have a comparative advantage in illegality, with borderlands and frontiers becoming centres for the production, consumption and trafficking of illicit drugs. Linked to this representation is a policy narrative and set of assumptions that statebuilding, peacebuilding, development and counter narcotics policies are mutually reinforcing, and involve the extension of a state presence into these frontier zones, along with effective drug eradication, substitution and development activities. In spite of the evident inaccuracy of this portrayal of the 'narco-frontier' the imaginary is extremely resilient and continues to be reflected and reinforced in policy texts and narratives. This paper asks why has this been the case. What ideological work does the imaginary perform and for whom? And what are the implications of an alternative imaginary of the margins?

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 gatekeepers 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, motivations, 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.

Recent years have seen the emergence of a policy consensus around the need for fundamental reforms of global drug policies. This is reflected in the call for ?development-oriented drug policies? that align and integrate drug policies with development and peacebuilding objectives, as captured in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These calls have been important in acknowledging the damage caused by the war on drugs and in drawing attention to how drugs are inextricably linked to wider development and peacebuilding challenges. Yet there is surprisingly limited academic research that looks critically at the drugs-development-peace nexus and which asks whether the goals of a ?drug-free world?, ?sustainable development? and ?the promotion of peace? are commensurate with one another, can be pursued simultaneously, or are indeed achievable. This articles studies these policy fields and policy-making processes from the geographical margins of the state ? frontiers and borderland regions ? because they offer a privileged vantage point for studying the contested nature of policymaking in relation to the drugs-development-peace nexus. We set out a historical political economy framework to critically assess the assumptions underlying the integrationist agenda, as well as the evidence base to support it. By developing the notion of a policy trilemma we are critical of the dominant policy narrative that ?all good things come together?, showing instead the fundamental tensions and trade-offs between these policy fields. In exploring the interactions between these policy fields, we aim to advance discussion and debate on how to engage with the tensions and trade-offs that this integrationist agenda reveals, but which have to date been largely ignored.

This commentary provides an introduction to the origins and emergence of Pat Jasan, a social movement that emerged amongst the Kachin population of northern Myanmar in response to a perceived crisis of illicit drug production and consumption. Although frequently presented as a case of drug vigilantism, we seek move beyond this stereotype by providing a granular account of the historical, political, and cultural conditions that lay the ground for the movement's emergence. Pat Jasan arose in the context of intersecting crises linked to protracted armed violence, extractive development and the ‘slow violence’ associated with widespread drug use. It was a response to a perceived vacuum of policing and the limitations of internationally supported harmed reduction measures to recognize or address the magnitude of the problem. Taking seriously the socially embedded foundations of the Pat Jasan movement provides an entry point for exploring how notions of harm reduction are constructed and understood locally and how movements like Pat Jasan emerge in response to societal concerns surrounding drugs.

In post-war transitions, how do centre-periphery relations change, and what is the role of actors at the margins of the state in negotiating these changes? This article explores these questions by examining Nepal's post-war transition following the 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement focusing on three borderland districts (Saptari, Bardiya and Dolpa). The article analyses contrasting dynamics in these districts to highlight changes in centre-periphery relations across several areas including state reform, the economy, and transitional justice. The analysis shows how post-war transitions often generate new forms of contentious politics, and how groups at the margins can push back against emerging political settlements to reshape politics at the centre. The ambiguities and contradictions inherent to these processes are explored, with state restructuring processes susceptible to elite capture, and re-balancing of power between centre and periphery also coinciding with continuing or increased divisions and inequalities within borderland regions.

Voices from the borderlands 2020 is the flagship publication of Drugs & (dis)order, a four year research project generating new evidence on how to transform illicit drug economies into peace economies. It aims to bring to light some of the experiences and perspectives we have been hearing in our fieldwork across seven drug and conflict-affected borderlands of Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar. It is intended for a broad audience of researchers, practitioners and policymakers working on issues related to drugs, development and peacebuilding. The testimonies in this report offer valuable insights into how illicit drugs – and drug policies – impact the dynamics of violence and peace, poverty and development, and insecurity and resilience.