Ian J. McCary joined the Department of State’s Counterterrorism Bureau as the Deputy Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in September 2022.
He served from August 2021-August 2022 as the Chargé d’Affaires for the U.S. Mission to Afghanistan, aka the Afghanistan Affairs Unit (AAU) operating out of Doha, Qatar. Prior to the establishment of the AAU in Doha, Mr. McCary was in Kabul, where he served as the U.S. Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) from August 2020 to August 2021.
A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Mr. McCary served from 2018-2020 as acting Deputy Chief of Mission in Pretoria, from 2015-2018 as Political Counselor in Islamabad, and from 2012-15 as DCM in Doha. He has also served as a political officer in Tunis, Baghdad, Rabat, Cairo, Jakarta, Riyadh, and Washington, D.C. He speaks fluent Arabic.