THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONNECTION: From Kabul to Nairobi — how US unmasked SA’s global drug links

The July 2026 extradition of alleged Afghan trafficking kingpin Abdul Ahir Qadeer from Kenya to the United States mirrors a previous landmark narco-trafficking case. Both operations involved covert US intelligence gathering, cross-border extraditions, and direct links to South African drug networks – highlighting how deeply South Africa is embedded in the global drug trade and drawing heightened scrutiny from Washington.

Qadeer, a former politician, is now facing drug and weapons trafficking conspiracy charges in the US.

While Qadeer’s recent arrest made headlines, it follows a playbook set nearly a decade ago.

Back in 2017, US authorities extradited four suspects from Kenya to the US because of their involvement in a sprawling global drugs case. The main accused was Mandrax kingpin Vijaygiri Anandgiri Goswami, better known as Vicky Goswami, originally from India.

Though separated by nearly 10 years, both cases share structural parallels and a common thread: South Africa as a key operational hub.

Case 1: Kabul to Kenya to US

This week, Daily Maverick reported on Qadeer’s extradition from Kenya to the US. It was alleged that Qadeer was an international drugs and heavy-weapons trafficker involved in a conspiracy to smuggle narcotics into the US.

Additional allegations tie him directly to South Africa. In late 2024, Qadeer allegedly arranged for a 2kg sample of methamphetamine (locally known as tik) to be handed over to a “buyer” in a Johannesburg parking lot. According to US authorities, though, the buyer was secretly supplying information to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Qadeer had also allegedly reassured the source that he could get the Taliban’s support to smuggle heroin.

He travelled from Kabul to Kenya in April 2025.

𝗗𝗖𝗜 𝗘𝗫𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗗𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗦 𝗔𝗙𝗚𝗛𝗔𝗡 𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗢 𝗨.𝗦. 𝗧𝗢 𝗙𝗔𝗖𝗘 𝗡𝗔𝗥𝗖𝗢𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗦 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗥𝗚𝗘𝗦

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), through its Anti-Narcotics Unit (ANU), has successfully extradited Afghan national Abdul… pic.twitter.com/O2bOyfUIOi

— DCI KENYA (@DCI_Kenya) July 11, 2026

Qadeer was arrested in a Nairobi hotel last year after the US lodged a criminal complaint against him. He unsuccessfully fought his extradition, arguing that the charges against him were politically motivated.

Following Qadeer’s extradition, the US Department of Justice confirmed he faces charges for allegedly “conspiring to import heroin and methamphetamine”. The federal crackdown on Qadeer closely mirrors Washington’s earlier prosecution of Goswami and his associates.

Case 2: Dubai to Kenya to US

Daily Maverick has written extensively about Goswami.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Goswami operated in Zambia, at a time when ANC figures were there in exile during apartheid. He once told a journalist, “I knew some of the ANC leaders and ministers when I was in South Africa from our days in Zambia.”

Goswami subsequently based himself in South Africa, where he was suspected of Mandrax trafficking.

Why all this matters

The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry is investigating whether a cartel, known as the Big Five, had infiltrated South Africa’s criminal justice system, politics and private sector. Accusations that have emerged before the commission include that the internationally linked Big Five was involved in crimes including drug trafficking and cash-in-transit heists and that law enforcers were acting to protect the cartel.

After that, he based himself in Dubai, where he was jailed in 1997 for Mandrax dealing.

Goswami was released from a Dubai prison in 2012 and went to Kenya, where he started operating with, among others, Kenyan brothers Baktash Akasha Abdalla and Ibrahim Akasha Abdalla, whom the US accused of being part of a criminal group known as the Akasha Organisation.

According to the DEA, Goswami and the Akasha brothers “negotiated on behalf of the Akasha Organization to procure and distribute hundreds of kilograms of heroin from suppliers in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region and to produce and distribute hundreds of kilograms of methamphetamine”.

Matching details

The US charged Goswami and the Akasha brothers with “conspiring to import heroin and methamphetamine” – the same charge levelled against Qadeer. 

Goswami and the Akasha brothers were caught after they supplied drugs to undercover DEA informants posing as members of a South American drug trafficking organisation.

Qadeer met a strikingly similar fate, brought down after allegedly negotiating drug deals with an undercover DEA informant he believed to be a legitimate buyer.

Dawood Ibrahim and Afghanistan (again)

Indian national Dawood Ibrahim is suspected of drug trafficking through various countries, South Africa included. The US said he ran a syndicate involved in “smuggling routes from South Asia, the Middle East and Africa” which he had shared with Osama bin Laden, who the US killed in 2011 and who the Taliban was said to have protected.

A US government fact sheet on Ibrahim said that he had travelled through Afghanistan with Taliban protection. Ibrahim, who is wanted in India for 1990s bomb blasts that killed hundreds of people there, was apparently connected to Mandrax trafficker Vicky Goswami, who is also from India.

Goswami was accused of having drug connections to, among other countries, Afghanistan, and was previously based in South Africa. Another trafficking accused, Abdul Zahir Qadeer, of Afghanistan, is now facing charges in the US.

Goswami and the Akasha brothers were extradited from Kenya to the US in January 2017. Qadeer followed that extradition route in July this year. He is now an accused in a mega trafficking conspiracy court case in the US, much like Goswami and the Akashas were.

The South African connection

Goswami testified in a US court in 2019 that he and the Akashas had tried to dominate South Africa’s drug trade, especially Mandrax activities, and had carried out killings in this pursuit.

The Akasha brothers were later sentenced for US-related issues, while Goswami seemed to become a state witness there.

Also linked to Goswami was Pakistani national Muhammad Asif Hafeez. Hafeez was extradited from the UK to the US in 2023. The following year, he pleaded guilty to conspiring to smuggle drugs, including vast quantities of heroin, into the US.

The US statement on his guilty plea said that between 2013 and 2016, Hafeez and his co-conspirators planned to set up a methamphetamine production facility in Mozambique.

But the plan disintegrated when a factory in India was raided, and law enforcement authorities seized tons of ephedrine meant for the manufacture of the methamphetamine in Mozambique.

Goswami, meanwhile, had testified that there was also a plan to pump masses of ephedrine into South Africa. The case took a political turn when Goswami alleged, in sealed grand jury testimony in the US, that members of the Gupta family were involved in money laundering on Hafeez’s behalf.

A Gupta lawyer previously failed to respond to Daily Maverick questions about this, while a lawyer representing Hafeez said his client denied knowing the Guptas.

The Gupta claims aside, the US federal indictments against Qadeer, Goswami, the Akasha brothers and Hafeez share a single common thread: every one of them connects directly back to South Africa. DM