Why does the Iraqi not trust his fellow Iraqi but trusts the stranger?
This question embarrasses and disturbs, but it is among the most important for understanding why states are not built even when all the resources are available.
Trust as social capital
Trust in political sociology is a concept called 'social capital' -- and it is exactly like material capital: it can be accumulated and it can be depleted, and its absence impedes everything. States that enjoy high levels of social trust -- Denmark, the Netherlands, Japan -- are ones where institutions are built with relative ease because people voluntarily comply with rules, cooperate in collective projects, and accept accountability. Low-trust states -- and many Arab states are among them -- suffer from high costs in building institutions because every step requires additional guarantees, detailed contracts, and doubled oversight.
Iraq falls in the zone of low internal trust, but with a notable exception: trust in 'the stranger' -- whether an international consultant, a foreign company, or even a diaspora Iraqi -- is sometimes higher than trust in the local Iraqi citizen. Why?
The answer lies in history
The answer resides in Iraqi social history. Decades of authoritarian rule made cooperation between citizens a source of danger rather than security: the informant was present in every neighborhood, and solidarity outside the sanctioned security cell was suspect. This legacy taught generations that someone you know can harm you more than a stranger can. The stranger does not inform on you and does not compete with you for your share in the same local social circle.
In societies where authoritarian rule turns neighbors into informants and friends into competitors, trust contracts inward: family first, then tribe, then sect. And beyond that is a desert of strangers -- who are sometimes safer.
Power-sharing as a compensation mechanism for the absence of trust
The sectarian and ethnic power-sharing that many resist discussing frankly is at its core a rational mechanism for managing the absence of trust. When you do not trust the neutral institution to distribute resources, you convert its distribution into a quota system that guarantees your share through your collective identity. This solution solves a short-term problem -- it prevents your complete exclusion -- but it entrenches the structural problem and makes building objective institutions impossible.
The path to rebuilding trust
Rebuilding social trust does not happen through discourse or legal reform alone. It happens through accumulated success experiences: public utilities that work efficiently, proving the state can be trusted; contracts fulfilled on time, proving the business partner can be relied upon; honest elections, proving that your vote makes a difference. Every small success experience deposits a measure of trust, and every institutional failure -- power cuts, absent services -- depletes it. Iraq is in reality in a war of attrition against its social capital for decades, and the only hope is to reverse this direction through real and visible institutional victories.
Analytical conclusion
Low internal trust in Iraq is not a personal defect in Iraqis -- it is a rational response to an institutional history that punishes trust outside narrow circles. And the paradox of trusting the stranger is simply that the stranger does not compete with you for a share in the same suffocating local circle. The solution is not in educating the citizen but in building institutional success experiences that give him an incentive to trust from within.
