SIGACTs

SIGACT is military jargon for significant activity. Like most Army acronyms, it can be juggled to mean different things and morph into various parts of speech. A SIGACT is a concise report of pertinent facts concerning any enemy-focused event that occurs throughout the day. They range from an isolated, harmless sniper shot to a car bomb that kills 20. They can be good news, such as the safe discovery and neutralization of an IED or enemy weapons cache; but are mostly bad, like a successful IED attack that kills a Soldier or Iraqi policeman. Writing them is a critical duty of the tactical operations center--the task force command and control center.


Yesterday, June 8th, there were only two SIGACTs in all of Ramadi and the greater surrounding area. This is astounding. A year ago, Ramadi was a lost cause. It was probably the most dangerous, most lawless city in the world. It routinely grabbed the highest percentage of SIGACTs throughout all Iraq. Yesterday, however, some Marines downtown found a rusty artillery shell and a belt of ammo under a trash pile with a metal detector. Then on the outskirts there was a truck bomb that struck a checkpoint on the highway and badly wounded some Iraqi policemen. But after that, not a single IED exploded, and nobody was shot at, and nothing else was reported. Anywhere. The small cache type finds are still somewhat common--forgotten remnants of the lawless days when insurgents ruled the city. They had weapon and ammunition stocks hidden everywhere to facilitate attacks. They would burst into the homes of citizens and stick their AKs in the faces of the kids to make the father bury artillery shells in the backyard--and keep them from telling us about them. When the Iraqi police finally rolled in and kicked the insurgents out, they brought in these caches by the Ford F-350 truckload. Now the insurgents are out of the city, they've stepped up their VBIED campaign.


Vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices--"vee-bids". Now that the IP and the people who love them deny insurgents access to the city, the terrorists changed their tack. Now they infiltrate massive truck bombs targeting innocents and infrastructure. They like to add big tanks of chlorine, but that's just a headline-grab; the chlorine that doesn't evaporate just gives some folks a sore throat for while and gives the media something to yak about. Last week they went for an Iraqna cell phone tower, but ended up destroying five homes and wrecking a few families. The one three days ago that hit a highway patrol station a few klicks outside the base was so large that the concussion knocked down ceiling tiles and filled the on-base gym with dust--it destroyed my workout and wounded some patrolmen (one lost a leg), but luckily no one was killed except the driver.

These attacks are senseless. They're like the Nazi buzz-bombs over London at the end of WWII. A big middle finger to the people of Ramadi who are starting to enjoy water and electricity again for the first time in years. They're an Al Qaeda ploy to prove to the people that they can still control their lives. The city is getting wise, though, and a new rule by the mayor and other tactics will hopefully push these attacks further outside the densely populated areas. It is easy to see how willing the people are to suffer major inconveniences for security--waiting in long lines at checkpoints, Iraqi Army and police clearing their homes again: they don't want another VBIED to detonate in their local market. Impinges on certain civil liberties are easy to bear when the alternative is rampant violence and arbitrary destruction.

But now, the people are starting to come to terms with the uneasy peace over Ramadi right now. A few days ago our neighborhood of Ramadi had their first soccer tournament on a new field. City municipal workers are coming out of the woodwork and fixing water pipes and electrical lines on their own now that they won't get sniped at, kidnapped, or beheaded for doing so. It's kind of unfortunate we don't have positive SIGACTs: official reports that tabulate every time some kids had a soccer game without getting offered 10 bucks and some candy to put a bomb in a hole where humvees drive, or when we finally removed all the concrete barriers and concertina wire barring all the storefronts (now open) along a former IED alley, or when the municipal workers tested the local water tower and found out--amazingly--that it had no bullet holes and didn't leak like a giant colander on stilts. But that might make things too hectic in the TOC again--no one wants to go back to the time when there were 40-50 SIGACTs per day.