For centuries they have comprised the ruling class, but since the fall of Saddam everything has changed for Iraq's Sunni Arabs. This weekend's elections are likely only to reinforce their disaffection, reports Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

Wednesday January 26, 2005 - Two weeks ago, Adnan al-Janabi, the then minister of state in the Iraqi interim government of premier Ayad Allawi, and a tribal leader of one of Iraq's largest predominantly Sunni tribes, was arrested, handcuffed and insulted by US soldiers manning a checkpoint leading into the Green Zone where he worked. Only when a senior bodyguard of the prime minister intervened was he released. That same day he resigned from government.

"You know, and other brother ministers know," he wrote, "how many insults we suffer on the hands of the occupation forces, and the Iraqi people suffer from far more. We have been patient telling ourselves maybe we can do something ourselves to reduce the effect of the occupation. But arresting one of the ministers in such a humiliating way can mean only one thing: that the sovereignty the security council talked about means nothing to the occupation force."

Janabi, apart from being one of Iraq's most revered tribal sheikhs, is also a highly educated man who found himself in an awkward position after the war.

He leads one of the largest tribes in what is known now as the triangle of death south of Baghdad. He is also a western-educated former Opec official who knows how to talk to the Americans as well as the UN. Finally, when he puts on his traditional Arab dress, he becomes the charming sheikh who can reason with everyone including Ayatollah Sistani. For almost two years now he has been trying very hard to bridge the ever growing gap between his community and the Americans; as fruitless a task as one might imagine.

Janabi is one of the few Sunni leaders still involved in this weekend's elections. Most others have announced their decision to boycott them. Nevertheless, when one junior American officer was fed up with this bald, thin man who insisted on knowing why he couldn't get to his office - despite his US-approved ministerial ID card - he was arrested on the spot.

Janabi's ordeal has been experienced by most of his community, a community trying to come to terms with the realities of the post-Saddam era; a change not helped by being the target of a near-daily American campaign of intimidation.

What happened to him might be a coincidence, but what is happening to his Sunni community has proven to be far more complicated than that. In Iraq - as is the case in most of the Muslim world - the Sunnis were always the natural-born leaders of the community. In Iraq's case this meant that they tended to look with a mixture of anxiety and scorn at the poor Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north; these fears and prejudices were exploited by those who came to control Iraq, from the Ottomans to Saddam via the British.

During four long centuries of Ottoman rule, the Sunni Arabs were automatically chosen to fill positions in the army and state. The British used the officers and statesmen already trained by the Ottomans to build the new country they named Iraq - especially when the Shia rebelled against them. And what started as secular socialist rule under the Ba'athists ended as a tribal Sunni regime led by Saddam Hussein.

Because the Sunnis always found work within the state, they never developed a political leadership of their own. So when the Americans toppled Saddam and disbanded the army and the reviled security services, which just happened to be the two largest employers of the Sunni community, they found themselves not only without leadership but disenfranchised and with a legitimate sense of persecution. And their worst nightmare, the revenge of the Shia and Kurds, seemed ever closer as the state ministries were purged of Ba'athists, a policy perceived by many in the community as anti-Sunni. "[The Americans] made every single mistake they could have thought of to alienate the Sunnis," said Janabi. "The US is behaving as if every Sunni is a terrorist."

A whole community woke up one day and found the realities of their everyday lives were shattered. They retreated into the two main forces that governed their semi-nomadic society for centuries, the tribe and the religion. And it was religion that dominated.

"When the Americans first came, all the tribal leaders wanted to jump on board the wagon - they all wanted money and contracts and jobs for their kids. It was us, the mujahideen who fired the first bullets," said a young Sunni cleric in Falluja, resting a Kalashnikov on his lap a few hours before the American attack on November.

That religious factor mixed with nationalistic sentiment gave birth to the insurgency that is now engulfing Iraq.

To get a picture of how their politics have turned to violence, you must visit the neighbourhoods around Baghdad, such as the one in which five men, all in their early 30s, sit around in their safe house, weapons laid against the walls. These are the insurgents that Americans call terrorists; their neighbours and families call them resistance; and they call themselves mujahideen, or holy warriors. They are Sunni Arabs. Two of them were working in Saddam's security service and the rest are normal people.

They say they are fighting the Americans because they are occupiers. They hate the Shia because they are backed by Iran, and they are killing the police because they are collaborators and because they are all Shia.

"Our main aim is to drive the Americans out and then everything will go back to normal, as it was before," said one of the men. According to Janabi and other officials who have met with insurgents in an attempt to involve them in a political solution, more than 80% of the insurgency is based on the fear and sense of repression that the Sunni community is facing. It now manifests itself in a nationalist resistance movement that hasn't yet developed a political programme.

Having a tribal name that associated you with a Sunni-dominated area or tribe was for centuries a guarantee of access to the government and a good job, but these same names now land you in American custody if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A widespread loathing of the Americans combined with a fear of Shia revenge is likely to lead to a very low turnout among Sunnis this weekend. For most, a Shia government is inevitable - and so, in turn, is the likelihood of further disturbance. A senior moderate Sunni official who is running in next week's elections was asked what would happen if the Shia won a landslide victory. He replied: "We will all join the armed resistance."