Mohamed Ag Najem
Ag Mohamed Najem is the leader of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad army.
Biography
He is thought to be born at the end of the 1950's in the Adrar des Ifoghas. His father of the Kel Adagh tribe was killed by the Malian army in the 1963 Tuareg rebellion at a time where he was a young child. At 20 years old he was recruited as a volunteer in the army of Gaddafi. He served in Libya and in Chad before returning to Mali to take part in the Tuareg rebellion led by Iyad Ag Ghaly, in 1990. He returned in Libya, rejecting the peace agreement signed between the the Malian governement and the rebels, where he became a colonel and was put in charge of an elite unit in the city of Sebha. The civil war in Libya prompted his return to his homeland.[1]
At the end of 2011, he federated his former fellow Libyan soldiers, three local Tuaregs clan and Tuaregs deserters of the Malian Army to become the military leader of the MNLA army.[2] After the declaration of Independance of Azawad, he became the chief of its army.