Building Walls, Building Bridges: Border Fortification and Insurgent Influence

• In Event: New Research on Territorial Control and Violence

Abstract

How does border fortification shape the impacted militant groups' propaganda and governance activities? We argue that when border fortifications interdict their foreign logistics, militants compensate by cultivating greater local support. Specifically, militants engage in influence campaigns, generating propaganda aimed at mobilizing civilian cooperation and preserving the support of core cadres. Empirically, we use a two-pronged research strategy that balances identification and generalizability: First, a difference-in-differences design using declassified microdata on border fortification and insurgent operations in Afghanistan offers causal evidence that border fortification drives militants to more civilian-targeted propaganda outreach efforts; Secondly, analyses using original data on the propaganda outputs of 38 Islamist militant groups, along with natural language processing techniques, reveal that militant propaganda engages with more religious themes in the wake of border fortification. Overall, our results re-evaluate the effect of border control as a key counterinsurgent tactic and shed light on the nonviolent strategy used by cross-border militancy.

Authors

• Christopher William Blair, Princeton University

• Luwei Ying, University of California, Los Angeles