Moreover "if the anti-terrorist coalition loses control of the situation in Afghanistan, this will impact on Central Asian security," analyst Sukhrob Sharipov told AFP.

"Pan-Islamic moods are prevailing, and Afghanistan's radical fanatics who are currently hidden away like ants will regroup," with Washington's attention riveted on Iraq, he added.

According to a military source who preferred to remain anonymous, "the Taliban boasted of having up to 30,000 fighters," compared with just a few hundred now imprisoned at the US military base in Guantanamo.

"That means the rest are hiding among the civilian population," he said.

Spring traditionally favours a new outburst of violence in war-torn Afghanistan, he noted.

Taliban guerrillas would find willing allies in local radical groups such as the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan which features on Washington's blacklist of terrorist organisations, he said.

The movement's guerrillas were trained at Taliban bases and would leap at the chance to wreak havoc in their native Uzbekistan, which they aim to turn into an Islamic state, analysts warned.

The leader of the Islamic party Tajik Rebirth, Said Abdulla Nuri, warned that "the ongoing war in Iraq will lead to the reactivation of the terrorist groups that have not been liquidated, including (members of) the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan who have crossed back into Uzbekistan."

Meanwhile, Russian border guards and Tajik officials also voiced alarm at the high level of drug trafficking, unlikely to abate f Afghanistan's shattered economy is left without its pledged hefty restoration budget as international attention shifts elsewhere.

Tajikistan is traditionally the first stop for heroin and opium from Afghanistan to be smuggled to Western markets.

Both before and since the collapse of the radical Islamic Taliban regime in November 2001, Afghanistan has been the main supplier of heroin to Europe.

Last year, Russian and Tajik guards posted along Tajikistan's 1,340-kilometre (840-mile) border with Afghanistan seized 6.7 tonnes of drugs, including four tonnes of heroin, and killed more than 50 suspected drug traffickers.

Poppy cultivation sharply increased after the ouster of Afghanistan's hardline Taliban regime nearly a year and a half ago, which had banned production of opium and its derivative heroin.

Afghanistan, currently ruled by an interim administration, produces three-quarters of the world's opium.

Nevertheless, Tajikistan has been unwilling to dampen Dushanbe's ties with Washington by intervening on Iraq's behalf, analysts said.

"Tajikistan is right to remain neutral. It is not that we don't care about the Iraqi people's fate, the conflict must be resolved politically," lawmaker Shodi Shabdolov said.

"We have no reason to spoil our relations with the United States, which give a huge amount of humanitarian aid to Tajiks. We have lots of problems, and must first of all get our country out of its social and economic crisis, " Sharipov said.

SPACE.WIRE