"We are determined to stop anything from crossing our borders, but it is not realistic to say we can completely close our borders," said Igor Sattarov, chief of the Tajik Foreign Affairs Ministry's information department.
Drugs were his big concern.
"Afghanistan shares a long border with us and everyone knows about all the drugs that comes from there," he said.
Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet states, didn't have enough resources after the Soviet breakup to create its own border-guard service and asked Russian forces to stay to watch for smugglers along some of the world's highest mountains.
One of those protecting the border is Russia's Colonel Alexander Kondratiev. He points to a giant map in his office in Dushanbe and runs a finger along the Tajik-Afghan border.
"Here's where we fought 21 different clashes with armed men last year," he says. "We also confiscated 43,000 weapons last year."
Most of the clashes were between the border guards, the drug runners and the heavily armed bodyguards who accompany the shipments, he said.
Still, Kondratiev is preparing to end his mission. Russian guards are leaving at the request of a Tajik government aiming to assert its sovereignty. He says they'll be gone by summer.
Interpol and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime see Central Asia as a growing problem because of the entrenched routes and the lack of solid intelligence.
Some of the trails have ancient footings in the Silk Route, which links northern Pakistan to Kashgar in China's northeast and runs through Central Asian countries to the Caspian Sea and into Europe.
"It's impossible to seal the borders. It just can't be done. The law enforcement agencies have to be upgraded, have to share information," said Bernard Frahi of the UN drug office in Vienna.
"The traffic networks are well organized, not just geographically but with connections -- people in place at points of entry, trucks that are used on various routes and the use of both the networks and of organized crime in supporting terrorism," he added.
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