By Terry Friel KABUL, March 1 (Reuters) - Afghanistan and its allies were stretched to breaking point by last year's surprise Taliban resurgence but have spent the winter regrouping for a new guerrilla offensive, its defence minister said on Thursday. Last year was the bloodiest since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban's Islamist government in 2001 -- more than 4,000 people, a quarter of them civilians, died in fighting. Both sides warn this spring, after the snows melt in a few weeks, could be even bloodier. "Last year, we were surprised. We were surprised by the amount of support which they were receiving, by the amount of their supplies, by their numbers," Defence Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak told Reuters at the sprawling military headquarters on the banks of the Kabul River. "We were stretched ... to our limits during that fighting. But now we are much better prepared." Wardak said last year's surge in violence, which saw the Taliban take on the U.S. and NATO in conventional pitched battles, had been aimed at scaring foreign countries into pulling troops out early. "They thought that if they inflicted enough casualties it would influence the decision of some countries concerning the deployment of their forces," he said. CONVENTIONAL GUERRILLA TACTICS While inflicting heavy losses on NATO and U.S. forces last year -- almost 200 in combat or from other causes -- the Taliban also took a big hit, he said. Fighting jumped dramatically as British-led NATO forces pushed into the Taliban's southern heartland for the first time. Analysts say the Taliban and their al Qaeda allies will shift back to conventional guerrilla tactics this year, using roadside and suicide bombs, after losing badly on the battlefield. Virtually unknown until 2005, when there were 21, suicide bomb attacks jumped to 139 last year and are expected to soar this year as the rebels copy tactics, drafting poor recruits from Afghanistan, Central Asia, Pakistan, Chechnya and beyond. On Tuesday, 23 people including two Americans and a South Korean, died when a suicide car bomber attacked the main U.S. base in Afghanistan during Vice President Dick Cheney's visit. Cheney was pressing Afghanistan and Pakistan to do more to seal the porous border that divides fiercely loyal Pashtun tribes. The Taliban say they have 2,000 suicide bombers ready for action, plus more than that number again still in training. NATO has 33,000 soldiers in the country, but that is about 10 percent short of what was pledged. Almost all the fighting is being done by U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch soldiers in the south and east, bordering Pakistan. Britain this week said it would send another 1,400 soldiers, soon -- making its deployment here greater than its Iraq force -- because other NATO countries would not. As well as keeping their forces in safer areas, many NATO counties restrict how they can fight, including banning operations at night or in the snow. The United States last month also committed an extra 3,200 soldiers, Poland is bosting its forces and the Afghan army and police are being strengthened and given more and better weapons. "We are still trying to be prepared for the worst possible scenario," Wardak said. "I don't think that we will be surprised this year and I think we will have much better results." President George W. Bush recently announced a new focus on the Afghan army and police as a critical way of allowing the United States to draw down its own forces. OPIUM AND JOBS But while the army is seen as a professional and multiethnic success in a country where tribes count more than anything, the police are distrusted and seen more as a problem than a solution. Even in Kabul, they illegally arrest and detain people and loot restaurants, witnesses say. Wardak, whose department does not cover the police, said reforms are continuing. But security is only half the problem or solution. The Taliban's resurgence is fuelled not so much by real support as money from record opium crops, safe havens in Pakistan and the failure of the government and its Western allies to provide jobs and basic services such as water and power. In Kabul, well-paid middle class Afghans have no water and power only for an hour or two a day. "Definitely, we could have done much better in the reconstruction field but also I can claim sincerely that a lot has been achieved," Wardak said. "Our people are having a lot of expectations which we cannot deliver. 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