Chris Jeon, UCLA Student, Joins Libyan Rebel Fight

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Chris Jeon, UCLA Student, Joins Libyan Rebel Fight

There are many untraditional ways to spend your summer vacation from college, but perhaps UCLA student Chris Jeon has found the most surprising: buying a one-way ticket to Cairo, hitching to Libya and joining the rebel fight against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

According to the National, the 21-year-old doesn't really know how to use a gun. He doesn't even know Arabic. But he said he "thought it would be cool" to fight alongside the rebels trying to gain control of the war-torn African country. So he did.

The National has more on Jeon's rebel assimilation:

Nevertheless, the rebels have clearly taken to the mathematics student with no obvious political leanings who decided to slum it as an Arab Spring revolutionary before going back to his calculator for fall semester.
[...]

His new mates have even bestowed on him a moniker that is a mish-mash of the names of local tribes and areas: Ahmed El Maghrabi Saidi Barga. When communication invariably reaches an impasse, he merely repeats his name and the rebels erupt in raucous cheers.


National reporter Bradley Hope wrote that he "couldn't believe his eyes" when he and a Christian Science Monitor correspondent spotted Jeon on the frontline in Sirte, the one remaning village under control of Gaddafi loyalists.

Chris Jeon, UCLA Student, Joins Libyan Rebel Fight

 

[waltky]

Now dey can find Muammar an' hang him by his heels like Mussolini...

Libyan fighters capture Gadhafi hometown of Sirte
20 Oct.`11 – Libyan fighters on Thursday overran the remaining positions of Moammar Gadhafi loyalists in his hometown of Sirte, ending the last major resistance by former regime supporters still holding out two months after the fall of the capital Tripoli.

Reporters at the scene watched as the final assault began around 8 a.m. and ended about 90 minutes later. Just before the assault, about five carloads of loyalists tried to flee the enclave down the coastal highway but were met by gunfire from the revolutionaries, who killed at least 20 of them. "Our forces control the last neighborhood in Sirte," Hassan Draoua, a member of Libya's interim National Transitional Council, told The Associated Press in Tripoli after Sirte's fall. "The city has been liberated." After the battle, revolutionaries began searching homes and buildings looking for any Gadhafi fighters who may be hiding there. At least 16 pro-Gadhafi fighters were captured, along with multiple cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw revolutionaries beating captured Gadhafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

Celebratory gunfire echoed through Sirte, which fell into the hands of revolutionaries almost two full months after they overrun Tripoli and many other parts of the oil-rich North African nation. Despite the fall of Tripoli on Aug, 21, Gadhafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing Libya's new leaders from declaring full victory in the eight-month civil war. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid, and by Tuesday said they had squeezed Gadhafi's forces in Sirte into a residential area of about 700 square meters but were still coming under heavy fire from surrounding buildings.

Deputy defense minister Fawzi Abu Katif on Wednesday told the AP that authorities still believe Gadhafi's son Muatassim is among the ex-regime figures holed up in the diminishing area in Sirte. He was not seen on the ground after the final battle on Thursday. In an illustration of how difficult and slow the fighting for Sirte was, it took the anti-Gadhafi fighters, who also faced disorganization in their own ranks, two days to capture a single residential building.

It is unclear whether Gadhafi loyalists who have escaped might continue the fight and attempt to organize an insurgency using the vast amount of weapons Gadhafi was believed to have stored in hideouts in the remote southern desert. Unlike Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Gadhafi had no well-organized political party that could form the basis of an insurgent leadership. However, regional and ethnic differences have already appeared among the ranks of the revolutionaries, possibly laying the foundation for civil strife. Gadhafi, who is in hiding, has issued several audio recordings trying to rally supporters. Libyan officials have said they believe he's hiding somewhere in the vast southwestern desert near the borders with Niger and Algeria.

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