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The Delhi-Darbar Restaurant, on Rudaki Street in downtown Dushanbe, is one little sign that this leafy, Soviet-era capital in the shadow of the Pamir Mountains is beginning to emerge into the modern, globalized world.

Most nights the D-D does a brisk custom, serving up authentic Indian cuisine to a growing crowd of foreign expats as well as a few dark-suited Tajik businessmen. Nearby is a Chinese restaurant, appropriately enough, and a Turkish-run Internet cafe.

Otherwise Dushanbe appears to have changed little since the late Soviet era, when I was last here. Its streets are clean, but sleepy, with few cars and almost no advertising. Except for the city's central square, which now hosts a monument to

Tajik national hero Ismail Somani, the statues of USSR founder Vladimir Lenin and other Soviet-era propaganda art throughout the country have been left entirely untouched.

The long and bitter civil war of the 1990's wreaked little destruction in the capital, but appears to have deprived Tajikistan of the frenetic development that has occurred in some other Central Asian states.

That is changing now. Some of Dushanbe's old Soviet buildings sport the names of big multinational banks and corporations, while the national airline TajikAir now claims to fly as far afield as Teheran, Novosibirsk and Munich. But without the gas or oil that are fuelling booms in some nearby states, Tajik businesses are betting heavily on their mountainous land's tourism potential.

Not that there are any tourists yet. Attracting tourists will require building a few hotels, fixing the atrocious roads and, oh yes, cleaning up the civil war minefields that still litter vast swathes of the countryside. Still, there is hope.

A Tajik magazine last week quoted a visiting editor of National Geographic Adventure as saying that trekking in Tajikistan's Pamirs is far better than hiking the tame and over-commercialised Himalayan trails of Nepal. "Tajikistan is perfect, home to the best mountains in the world," he says.
                      
Several newspapers recently reported that India is building its first-ever foreign military base at Ayni airfield, about 20 km from Dushanbe, where it allegedly intends to station MiG-29 fighters and Mi-17 multirole helicopters, which can be used as gunships.

Tajikistan's Defence Ministry last week strictly denied that. "We have only an agreement, signed in 2002, on India's assistance in the reconstruction of Ayni airfield, and there is no suggestion that the airfield is to be used by the Indian Armed Forces," Major General Maruf Khasanov told journalists. But experts here say the project is real, and that the denials are probably just part of the negotiating process.

Nervous about the possible reaction of Pakistan to the appearance of an Indian base a half hour's flying time from its northern frontier, Tajikistan may demand that India refrain from basing MiG fighters at Ayni and may also ask for joint management of the airfield. But by the end of this year the deal is likely to become official, experts say, and India will take its place alongside the US and Russia as a power with military assets based in Central Asia.

Tajikistan's only strategic resource is its hydro-electric potential, which makes it all the more ironic that the country suffers from chronic power shortages that often leave even parts of Dushanbe shrouded in blackness each evening.

No one can explain why towns in war-torn Afghanistan can be lit up like Christmas trees at night while those just across the border in Tajikistan, home to the world's tallest hydro-electric dam, remain sunk in darkness.

The electricity crisis is practically the only thing Tajiks talk about these days, and wild rumours abound. Some people claim that Tajikistan's main enemy Uzbekistan, of course has sabotaged the country's power system. Others claim that corrupt officials are stealing Tajikistan's electricity and selling it abroad for personal profit.

In any case, it's not good for business. When the lights go out on Rudaki Street, the Delhi-Darbar has to close early, and everyone has to go home with an empty stomach.