By Zabihullah Tamanna

KABUL

Afghan counter-narcotics personnel on Sunday detained Haji Watan, a notorious local drug lord, in the Ghanikhel district of Afghanistan’s eastern Nangrahar province.

According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Interior, police raided the area based on a tipoff and captured Watan after a brief exchange of gunfire.

The arrest of Watan, whose name is on Interpol’s list of wanted global drug dealers, was a "great success" for the government’s special counter-narcotics unit, the statement said.

In a related development, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan this season fell by 19 percent -- and opium production by 48 percent -- for the first time in six years, according to a new survey released on Wednesday.

The survey, conducted jointly by the Afghan Ministry of Counter-narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), showed that 183,000 hectares of land was cultivated with poppy in 2015 -- a 19-percent decrease from 2014, when 224,000 hectares of land was sown with the illicit crop.

The survey also recorded a 48-percent drop in opium production, from 6,400 tons to 3,300 tons over the same period.