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.

To Survive or To Win?

There is a pervasive lack of understanding concerning the type of conflict we’re in among the junior leaders and soldiers fighting the war on the front lines, and this is absolutely not their fault. You can’t even put the onus on the chain of command or even the highest leaders of the military; though as time passes, pressure should mount on our senior military leaders for allowing ignorance and misconception to exist in our junior leaders, those on the ground calling the shots. This pervasive sentiment typically takes two forms: ignorance of the nature of counterinsurgency warfare, and a mistaken pessimism that certain Arabic cultural traits render all our idealistic efforts into a costly, pointless death grind. This mindset causes the majority of junior leaders and the Soldiers or Marines under them to care about only one thing: survival—not winning; maybe at best doing some good where they can, but not making lasting transitional changes. The issue is simply that junior leaders across the military are not prepared or properly trained for the type of war they are fighting.


In a recent mass-email home, a Lieutenant on the front lines wrote eloquently of the Ranger Creed, applying this tried and true Army maxim to his current situation, and yet it doesn't seem to fit: “We have no ‘Ranger objective.’” he wrote. “We have no hill to take, no terrain to dominate, no land which, once captured, will be safe haven for us.” He’s exactly right: there is no land to take. Enemy centers of gravity are not terrain, as they are in conventional, linear battle—they are rather complex and amorphous networks of people and information that mitigate our overwhelming firepower, and they are the nebulous, abstract mist of human attitudes and perceptions in the people. Of course there’s an objective, only it takes more than intestinal fortitude to conquer—it requires historical perspective, cultural understanding, patience, and cunning. And it will not be taken in battle; it will gradually, imperceptibly be achieved over the course of years. While it is one thing to talk glibly of the “nature of counterinsurgency,” it is an entirely different matter to train a soldier or marine how to fight one, to equip a leader with a contextual framework and cultural understanding to truly offensively prosecute a counterinsurgency. You don’t necessarily win in this war by firing your tank and taking a bunker, like every soldier and marine has been trained superbly to do—though those skills are important and do play a role. Instead, we are relying on junior leaders to figure it out without the rigorous training in this other type of warfare. What did my unit do immediately prior to deployment? Ship out Grafenwoehr Training Area for two weeks to fire our tanks, artillery cannons, and Bradley fighting vehicles at the range. What do we really need? A few Staff Sergeants who can de-escalate a situation with some cultural savvy and knowledge of a few key Arabic phrases, and a Lieutenant armed with some nuanced negotiating skills.

Many junior leaders (and others) believe that Iraq is hopeless because of various cultural, tribal, or religious traits. Can democracy succeed where “…forgiveness brings shame, and personal vengeance is justice?” as one Lieutenant put it. Maybe so, but I think what he’s describing is the human condition without the rule of law, not a tragic character flaw peculiar to the Arabs. This is a poverty and war stricken land—the people display a normal level of pathological victimization for a people crushed by a dictator whose oppressive yet relatively stable society and infrastructure was devastated by years of sanctions and an invasion of 70-ton tanks and unnumbered explosives. But the people thirst for justice, too, and rule of law is something they yearn for. It will take years, of course, but we're not helping by throwing our hands up and saying it can’t be done, denying it’s our problem, or harping about how this whole debacle was a mistake to begin with. Is each death of a US Servicemember an embarrassment to our nation's collective shortsightedness? That really remains to be seen. I suppose these deaths could very well become an embarrassment: not necessarily because the decision to invade was based on faulty intelligence, but probably due to our nation's insatiable fast-food desire to see success in terms of 2-4 year political intervals and an unwillingness to witness democracy at its bloody, turmoiled roots. We’re the 20th century looking back 200 years ago at ourselves, expecting them to catch up right now to where we’re at, and if they won’t, then let’s get out of dodge, because it’s no longer our responsibility.

To the military’s credit, leaders at all echelons are trying hard to fight this war the right way. Senior leaders have established a counterinsurgency academy in Iraq, and the latest enemy tactics and current tactical scenarios have made their way into the military’s training centers; the Army has recently published a field manual for counterinsurgency, and the Marines have republished their classic Small Wars Manual that went forgotten during Vietnam. It may be too little too late. The counterinsurgency academy is focused at the battalion staff and company commander level and above, and does not yet integrate NCOs and junior leaders—those paying the toll every day. Scenario training is good for decisive tactical decision making, but doesn't equip a leader with the contextual understanding they need to be proactive prosecutors of this complex war, and to recognize the political significance of tactical decisions. Since the beginning of the war, leaders at all echelons have had one goal constantly in mind: bring their Soldiers home safely. Survival mode is easy—especially when confronted with the unknown. The tragedy is that survival mode is often counterproductive and not focused on facilitating an end to this interminable conflect.
Historically renowned for creativity and intrepidity in battle, hundreds of brave young leaders are figuring out on their own how to fight this war the right way. Unfortunately, relying on the creativity of insufficiently trained leaders is somewhat of a crapshoot. Some units get it, and see incredible success, such as the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division in Ramadi; all too often others don’t because they're too busy treading water, simply trying to survive.