Kam Air, an airline owned by a politically-connected Afghan businessman, was blacklisted by the US military in Afghanistan for opium smuggling. Then the Afghan government complained.
In late January, the US military blacklisted Afghanistan's Kam Air from winning contracts with the US in Afghanistan, with the head of a US military anticorruption unit asserting that the airline was involved in bulk opium smuggling on commercial flights to Tajikistan.
The decision touched off a flurry of backroom lobbying, given the political connections of Kam Air's owner and the shadow it cast over efforts to merge the private airline carrier with the struggling Afghan government-owned airline Ariana.
The result? A few weeks later, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF) issued a terse statement announcing that Kam Air would be removed from the blacklist pending the results of an Afghan government investigation into the drug smuggling charges.
The fee would effectively allow Iran to cement its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, but...
Mustafa Al-Shawa awoke at 2:30 a.m. on Monday to the sound of gunfire and the rumble...
Iran has announced plans to introduce a system of maritime fees in the strait of Hormuz...
Of all the military failures the US has suffered in the past 25 years in the...
