History doesn't repeat, it rhymes

Abu Saleh sits in a striped tent pitched by the side of the highway joining Jordan and Syria with Iraq and reflects on the latest, improbable twist in his 10-year career fighting those he considers the enemies of his fellow Iraqi Sunnis.

A decade ago, when the Americans rolled into Ramadi in their tanks and Humvees, the former Saddam regime security officer led a group of Sunni fighters who took the fight to the occupiers with improvised explosive device (IEDs) and ambushes.

The scars of their insurgency are still visible in Ramadi's industrial quarter: deserted shops riddled with bullet holes, metal shutters twisted like foil, black soot covering the walls.

But Abu Saleh and his fellow fighters lost their way, he says. "We made mistakes. We took people randomly. Some of us resorted to kidnapping to fund the resistance, then it became an industry, detaining people inside their neighbourhood, planting IEDs in front of people houses." He explains how the resistance fragmented into competing groups, how they began to fight each other and al-Qaida and how their neighbours eventually turned on them.

By 2009 they had been, in effect, run out of town by a local militia hunting them on behalf of the Americans. Like thousands of other Iraqi Sunnis, Abu Saleh took refuge in neighbouring Syria.

Now in his mid-30s, Abu Saleh is back in Ramadi, borne on a tide that sprung from the revolutions of Tahrir Square and Benghazi and gathered force amid the bloodshed in Syria. Abu Saleh and other Iraqi Sunnis believe it is a tide that could flow all the way to Baghdad, sweeping away the Shia government they despise.

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In another echo of recent Arab uprisings, Abu Saleh says he and other Sunni leaders have now secured support from wealthy Gulf state figures who funded them during the early years of their insurgency against the Americans.

After the truce between Sunni groups, he says, a meeting was set up in the Jordanian capital, Amman, between a united front of Iraqi factions and representatives of "charities" from the Gulf.

The Iraqis asked for money and weapons; after a decade of war their arsenals were almost depleted. What didn't get destroyed by US or Iraqi forces was sold to the Syrians. They needed money to train and recruit new fighters but more importantly a religious sanction from the religious authorities for a new round of fighting.

The Gulf figures asked for more time and a second meeting was held in Amman, this time attended by a higher-ranking group of officials from the both sides. The answer was yes: the "charities" would offer support as long as the Iraqi Sunnis were united and used their weapons only after Iraqi government units used force against them. Another Sunni leader confirmed to the Guardian that the Amman meetings had taken place.

"There is a new plan, a grand plan not like the last time when we worked individually," another commander told me. "This time we are organised. We have co-ordinated with countries like Qatar and Saudi and Jordan. We are organising, training and equipping ourselves but we will start peacefully until the right moment arrives. We won't be making the same mistakes. Baghdad will be destroyed this time."