On the sidelines of conspiracy: Wasta and invisibility in Iraqi Kurdistan's pseudo-state

The Middle East has often been described as a hot-bed for conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. In Iraqi Kurdistan, this is not immediately recognizable. Due to Iraqi Kurdistan's stateless history and accompanying conception of sociality, inhabitants do not conceive of invisibility in the same way as is presupposed in many conventional definitions of conspiracy theories. Citizens see invisibility as a provisional, rather than essential, facet of expanding social connections (wasta) that traverse civil/state divisions. As such, Iraqi Kurdish citizens by-and-large do not believe that a fundamentally separate and unseeable (group) of people can control the state and international politics. Examining how wasta is made in Iraqi Kurdistan highlights the liberal, state-centric presuppositions inherent in conventional definitions of conspiracy theories and assists in explaining the Euro-American fervour in combating them. Concordantly, the anthropology of conspiracism should not only aim at de-exoticising conspiracy theories but also reflect upon which presuppositions are brought to the discourse initially.