USAMA BUTT

Executive Director

Usama Butt is IISA’s founder. He is a strategist and conflict resolution expert and holds post graduate degrees from the University of London in Security Studies. He has worked on Inter-Islamic & Intra-Islamic conflicts, Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR), civil-military relations, conflict transformation and post-conflict reconstruction, and capacity building of INGOs. He has advised governments, global governance agencies, as well as humanitarian and development organisations. He is published internationally and resides in London.

JONATHAN BLOCH

Director

Jonathan Bloch studied law at the University of Cape Town and the London School of Economics. He was politically involved in South Africa in the worker and student movements and remains active in human rights circles in the UK. From 2002 until 2014 he chaired the Canon Collins Educational and Legal Assistance Trust, one of the largest South African scholarship awarding organisations. He was a London Borough of Haringey Councillor 2002-14. He has co-authored several books on intelligence. He owns and runs a worldwide financial information business across four continents and serves as a director of several financial service companies.

Dr. Safa

Co-Director

Dr. Safa A. Alshek Husain is the former Deputy National Security Advisor to Iraq and a senior engineer, defence technologist, and security strategist with more than four decades of experience spanning military service, defence industry leadership, academia, and national governance.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Baghdad (1976), a Diploma in Military Science from the College of Reserve Officers in Baghdad (1978), and a master’s degree in computer engineering from the University of Technology, Baghdad (1990). This combined technical and military education formed the foundation of a career at the intersection of engineering innovation and national security.

From 1977 to 1987, Dr. Safa served as an Engineer Officer in the Iraqi Air Force, working on military systems and operational capability. He later rose to the rank of Brigadier General and served as Director of Research and Development in Iraq’s military industry from 1987 to 2001, overseeing strategic defence R&D, industrial capacity development, and applied military technologies. During this period, he also lectured at the University of Technology in Baghdad (1996–2002), contributing to the training of future engineers while integrating applied defence and industrial experience into academic instruction.

Following Iraq’s political transition in 2003, Dr. Safa served as a Deputy Member of the Iraqi Governing Council (2003–2004) before assuming the role of Deputy National Security Advisor within the Iraqi National Security Council from 2004 to 2018. In this capacity, he played a central role in national security coordination, strategic assessment, and inter-agency policy formulation during a prolonged period of internal and regional instability. Since 2018, he has continued to serve as a senior consultant to the National Security Council and the Al-Nahrain Centre for Strategic Studies. As Co-Director of IISA, Dr. Safa brings deep technical expertise, strategic judgement, and institutional experience shaped by decades at the highest levels of defence and national security decision-making.

JOHN HUGES

Head of Strategy and Innovation

John Huges is a journalist with over thirty years of experience covering Southern Africa. He holds both a Master’s degree with Distinction in Digital Documentary and a BA(Hons) in Economics from the University of Sussex. For many years, he served as editor of the Angola Peace Monitor and has written for various organisations, including the Swiss Peace Foundation. He has also been a member of the Project Advisory Board for the Connected Histories of the BBC project at the University of Sussex.

Irfan Mughal

Chief Financial Officer (CFO)

Irfan Mughal is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountant in England and Wales. He studied engineering at City, University of London, before training as a chartered accountant with a firm in Mayfair, London. Irfan has extensive experience in working in accountancy and finance and with a wide base of clients, including international clients, looking to invest in the United Kingdom. He has over a decade of experience working with IISA management and serves as a partner at a London based firm of chartered accountants.

Herong Cui

Project Assistant

Herong Cui holds a master’s degree in applied development economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA (Hons) in International Development from King’s College London. He has extensive research experiences on the East Asian late industrialisation and the political economy of industrial policies. His expertise also covers the Asia Pacific regional security, US-China rivalry and the politics & governance in Southeast Asian “fragile states”. Before joining IISA2.0, he has internship experiences at international NGOs and the volunteering experience at the UN system.