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Radio War Nerd EP #635 — Iraqi Insurgency, Pt. 5: Summer 2006, feat. Rob Ashlar (Patreon)

Published:
2026-09-16 18:26:23
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2026-09
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Guest: Rob AshlarRecorded: September 12, 2026

We continue our series on the pivotal Iraqi insurgency with researcher Rob Ashlar. In part 5, we cover the events of the summer of 2006: the assassination of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) founder/emir Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which the Bush Admin promised would all but end the insurgency. Spoiler: It didn't. We discuss Zarqawi's replacement, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, how AQI and its parent umbrella, the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC), radicalized its violence and adapted to local conditions as the Iraqi national government and the US-led Coalition forces lost control over Anbar province.

Subscribe to Rob Ashlar's substack. Follow Rob on Twitter here.Read Rob Ashlar's article "Incapable of Military Defeat: The Story of the Iraqi Insurgency (May-August 2006)" in Cosmonaut magazine.

Further listening:-RWN #458 — Iraqi Insurgency, Pt 1: 2003-4-RWN #459 — Iraq Insurgency, Pt 2: 2005-RWN #622 — Iraqi Insurgency, Pt 3: Early 2006-RWN #624 — Iraqi Insurgency, Pt. 4: Spring 2006

*Key Acronyms & Names for this episode:-Abu Musab al-Zarqawi ("Zarqawi"): leader of JTJ (Jama'at al-Tawhid wa-l Jihad), then Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).-Abu Hamza al-Muhajir (a.k.a. Abu Ayyub al-Masri): Egyptian-born jihadist who took over AQI after Zarqawi's assassination in June 2006.-Zawahiri (Ayman al-Zawahiri): Bin Laden's deputy in Al Qaeda, subsequently leader of Al Qaeda from Bin Laden's assassination in 2011 until the US killed him in a drone strike in mid-2022.-AQI: Al Qaeda in Iraq, formed in 2004 by Zarqawi, folded into Islamic State in Iraq after Zarqawi's death-MSC - Mujahideen Shura Council, political umbrella including Zarqawi's org, transition group that laid foundation for the future Islamic State/ISIS-AQC: Al Qaeda Central, led by Osama bin Laden

*Maps

Total time: 1:43:20Direct link to this episode's mp3 here

*

John's new essay collection, To The Crows, is available to subscribers. You can also order a hard copy on Amazon - read it, know it, review it!

Subscribe to Radio War Nerd at patreon.com/radiowarnerd

Sound production by Telescope Audio

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CR

GWOT —> Turbo Fucking America. Racist Croats remain undefeated in prognostication.

Hugh Jazz

Honey get in here, new Iraqi insurgency episode just dropped

Isaac Suárez

I think it’s hard to call GWOT either a “success” or “failure.” It initiated a seismic shift in the way US pursued foreign policy and imperial management. The US has been able to refine certain technical aspects of imperial management in a remarkable way- no other empire could bring down the direct and targeted violence that the American empire can in the 21st century. The US national security state has expanded its influence throughout the global south, and entrenched their hegemonic position within domestic US politics. This raw coercive force remains- and it would not exist without GWOT. However, that technical refinement and military expansion came at a serious cost. The US has lost every formal war it has waged in the GWOT era. The soft power of the US empire- its cultural hegemony, the ideological power of the “American model” of free market capitalism/liberal democracy- has cratered. The arbitrary and indiscriminate nature of imperial violence, as well as the obvious corruption of US political and governing institutions, has discredited the multinational institutions that sustained American soft power. I don’t see how this decline can be feasibly reversed- the empire has subsumed “the city on a hill.” So, tl;dr I think GWOT can’t be called a success or failure. It was an evolution- a change akin to other late empires (the way feudalism emerged from the decline and collapse of the Roman Empire; or how the Varangians and client states of Anatolia, the Levant, Balkans and Greece emerged from the decentralization of the Byzantines.) Both empires survived for centuries in these new forms- but the nature of their power evolved (and their most productive and influential eras in terms of culture and tech passed.)

CR

I want to know when the U.S. decided to ally itself with al qaeda and to continue siding with militant Sunnis like it learned from the British. I know that’s the only reason OBL was assassinated in 2011, so it could open ally with AQ against Assad and secular Arabia and levant, but SF were “fighting” chechens since 2001 and the only way all those ETIM fighters made it across Central Asia was via the archipelago of U.S. bases.

Alec

36:03 “six seven”

Alec

Kinda fucked up to say this no?

CR

100,000% increase in African terrorism. And the terror always seems to happen against NATO’s enemies.

Jennifer Hammerhead

At the start of the episode you raised the "win or loss" question and I agree with both your takes. I've been reading a lot of 1800-1880ish history lately and I see US foreign actions now as a extension of that era (Indian Wars and Capitalist/settler expansion westward). Whether we did it on purpose or due to the weakness of de facto, decentralized, bourgeois governance, the US loves to utilize "chaos" to achieve our goals. even when we stumble assbackwards into it, suffer losses etc, if there's a opportunity to build hegemony, we take it! Great episode!

T

Thanks for upgrading Rob’s microphone!

Alex

Great time to reflect on all of this. 25 years of terror!

MoldyTolge

Loved the sidebar about the Black Widows. Been interested since Mark brought them up years ago

Dan

On the discussion if 9/11 was a success, while it certainly has led to America getting weaker it's not clear to me that the jihadi movement's goals have really been advanced because the main powers to gain influence from American weakness are countries like China which really isn't fundamentally better for their vision of the world than America and also if the goal was to unite the Muslim or at least sunni world in the reaction to the American response I think that also has to be a judged a failure, most important sunni states are American colabators and/or actively rivals with other sunni dominated states

a clash of purple

It's not the first time Dolan has missed an episode (or several). Relax. He's probably just been having explosive diarrhea for months. He could technically podcast from the toilet, but they respect Brendon too much to force him to edit out all the various bathroom noises.

Jason Thompson

I would love y’all to do an episode on what the hell is up with Morocco. Opening an embassy in Israel??!! Is there actually any public support for their Israel ties? Or is their civil society even feebler than in Saudi Arabia? What is up with these assholes?

Jason Thompson

I do miss him tho! I mean Ames and the recurring guest stars are also champions, but we need the original poetry quoting War Netd

Jason Thompson

Or one of those ‘extinct’ giant New Zealand eagles!

CR

Niccolo Soldo. @fistedfoucault He wrote a substack article called Turbo America four or five years ago when substack was new.

CR

I think we were always going to end up this way, and GWOT has preserved the empire past its sell-by date. And when the Democrats are back in the White House, everyone is going to go back to pretending Trump is an anomaly and not the natural result of all of this. But the idea that the U.S. isn’t out to expand so much as it is trying to coast on the postwar order and keep its enemies down was evident from the moment the Berlin Wall fell. How the U.S. treated the former Soviet Union is how it has treated all of its vassals and enemies and eventually itself. That was always inevitable once the neoliberal revolution of the seventies came and Reagan solidified it all. Obama was the best republican president in history by the metrics of ensuring that no one in D.C. will ever doubt supply side economics as being the orthodoxy of 21st century America instead of being the destructive voodoo economics bullshit Herbert Walker rightfully called it when running against Reagan.

Peter Z

I wonder if Mark intentionally held back!

Kyle Erickson

“Bin Laden as doofus” is a pretty interesting theory and I wonder if it helps explain why he was kinda sidelined at the end of his life. Did “the adults in the room” at AQ kick him upstairs?

Ben Cvijovic

mark just loves mumbling through these arabic pronunciations of the groups lol, “majilisshuraalmujahadeenfial” amazing series hope there’s more to come!!!

ben s

It’s been surreal listening to these because this is about the time that I started to develop beyond a superficial understanding of politics and history. It was easy to be a teenage war supporter after 9/11, but one of the best things my parents ever did for us was to encourage us to watch and read the news. And it was at this moment when, even as a 16 year old who mainly wanted to party, that I began to see the wrath of the US empire. At the same time I couldn’t understand how it was so clear to me that the gwot was a total mistake, but my dipshit social studies teachers almost reveled in the war (something to do with them all being football coaches too). I did my best to try to get a deeper handle on things, but it was still some time before I had access to or knowledge of any kind of media outside of the mainstream, and I was still in thrall of Obama. But being reminded of Fallujah and Zarqawi, names I read every other day in the paper, in this series has helped me see how these specific years and events were so important to my shaping understanding of the world in the moment.

Ander Pierce

Big improvement in the audio this episode, shoutout to the new mic. I am very tolerant of poor audio but the last episode had grated xD

a clash of purple

If someone knows more about the subject, go ahead and correct me, but my understanding is that for one thing, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have Moroccan heritage, so Israel and Morocco have always had better relations than other Arab states. For another thing, the U.S. recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. But I don't think there's broad public support for Morocco's participation in the Abraham Accords or this move of opening an embassy. The government simply ignores their people. Again, someone correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

Jason Thompson

I wonder. If there reslly is an element of “Jewish Moroccans support Israel”, that would be one of the most depressing things ever

a clash of purple

A majority of Jews worldwide support Israel, to one extent or another. It's depressing, but not surprising. In a nationalist world, everyone wants a nationalism to call their own. And it's not like Israeli nationalism is inherently any more evil than any other nationalism. Not to say that Israeli nationalism isn't evil, just that all nationalisms are inherently evil.

Alexander McCarron

This series is so good, thank you! Does anyone have a good long read about what life in Iraq is like now? How close or far they are from the kind of society they were before the war?

Alasdair Stewart

I was in bootcamp when zarqawi got assassinated. I dont really remember what we were doing on that day but we were in the squad bay and our senior DI had us all form a school circle and made the announcement. Everyone seemed pretty hyped. I felt oddly ambivalent. I guess I felt like it wasnt gonna make much of a difference but wasnt smart enough to explain it to myself.

Joe McNiff

Rob could be the third mic on this show he is the best semi regular guest you guys have

Mark Ames

Morocco is an interesting story, will look for a guest. I would think the reasons for their collaboration with the DC Cartel is rooted in the politics of the monarchy and its old relationships with European powers. If I remember right the Moroccans were also big players in the Safari Club. There are a lot of Moroccan Jews in Israel, but they've mostly been second class citizens since arriving in the 50s, and they're largely very reactionary. fwiwi I have Moroccan Jewish roots, so quite possibly this is, to quote Trevor from GTA5, *entirely my fault.*

Hans Anders (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-29 12:00 Nationalisms that claim other people’s land are worse than those who don’t.
2026-09-26 19:45 Nationalisms that claim other people’s land are worse than those that don’t.

Nationalisms that claim other people’s land are worse than those that don’t.

KM

Great Guest , very happy with new audio :)