Wadel Abdelkader Kamougué (May 20, 1939 – May 9, 2011) was a Chadian politician and army officer. Kamougué was a leading figure in the 1975 coup d'état and subsequently held several positions in the Chadian government and legislature. He was Vice President of Chad from 1979 to 1982 and President of the National Assembly from 1997 to 2002. Kamougué was also President of the Union for Renewal and Democracy (URD) political party, and he was appointed as Minister of National Defense in April 2008. Life and career He was born in Bitam, Gabon, where his father was serving as a soldier in the French Army. However, his family were from Logone Oriental in southern Chad and he was always considered to be Chadian. Kamougué attended the school for soldiers' children in Brazzaville before joining the army himself and then being sent to France for officer training. As a junior officer he was one of the key military leaders (some sources name him as "the" leader) of the coup d'etat which overthrew and killed Chadian President Ngarta Tombalbaye on April 13, 1975. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1975 to 1978 as well as a member of the Higher Military Council (Conseil supérieur militaire, CSM) under Head of State Félix Malloum. Kamougué subsequently became Vice President in the Transitional Government of National Unity (GUNT) when Goukouni Oueddei became President on November 10, 1979, remaining in that position until the GUNT was overthrown by supporters of Hissène Habré when they captured N'Djamena on June 7, 1982. After Habré seized N'Djamena, Kamougué, based in Moundou, continued to control southern Chad at the head of a permanent committee, and he called for a federal solution to the conflict, which was rejected by Habré. On September 4, 1982, a broadcast from N'Djamena announced that rebels within Kamougué's forces had captured his headquarters and that he had fled to Cameroon. Kamougué returned from exile in early 1987. He then became Minister of Agriculture under Habré in August 1987. Kamougué was appointed as Minister of Civil Service and Labor in April 1993, as part of the transitional government formed after the Sovereign National Conference. Following the January 1994 devaluation of the CFA franc, a civil service strike began on April 26, 1994, seeking higher salaries to compensate for the devaluation of the currency, and Kamougué led negotiations with the strikers. In the midst of the strike,