THE Pathans. long and legendary warriors of Pakistan's rugged North West Frontier Province, have engaged in a totally unexpected kind of warfare.

These fabled people — best known as gun-brandishing Xters and arms merchants are not to be meddled with — are no longer merely armed to the teeth with bullets or. latterly, rocket launchers.

Now. they have added condoms to their arsenal.

A unique family planning Kgramme tn the Mardan trict. north of Peshawar, has convinced almost 300 Pathans to go door-to-door promoting contraception. The Initiative has. by all accounts, worked extremely well

The project, launched In May 1988, had an Initial goal of training 100 male volunteers, both literate and Illiterate, about the Intricacies and advantages of family planning. The stalwart Pathans, working in teams of five, had the momentous task of spreading information and distributing condoms among the 200,000 people of Maidan, a city tn the heart of their tribal homeland.

The unusual decision to educate men to take on what had

previously been viewed by Pathan society as a predoml'

the most practical way of bringing the area's rapidly-growing population under con-

ral

In the North West Frontier Province, only 10.7 per cent of the sexually active population to thought to use contraception — below Pakistan's nationa] average of 11.8 per cent.

Many factors account for

this. Including a low female IIteracy rate and a tendency for eto marry early In life, be they have had the chance to learn about contraception As well, the Pathans have often resisted family planning be cause their male-dominated society attaches great importance to the number of mates bom into each family.

In a mate-dominated society where family planning could be viewed as a threat to inherited tribal roles, male acceptance was seen as critical to the sue cess of any project.

Nonetheless, despite the cultural hurdles facing the Mardan project. It fot off to a flying start. Volunteers literally queued up to do their part tn reducing population growth An original corps of 100 volunteers soon expanded to almost 300. The group now even Includes a small number of rel! gious scholars, knowns as Ulemas and spiritual leaders, called Imams.

A few women have also

Joined the volunteers to help nlng with other women, some of whom live in seclusion, or purdah, from al but close fam

unteers that they have expanded their services to villages outside Mardan. They hold regular fortnightly meetings and have begun handing vice at booths which they set up at agricultural shows and. other events The promotional stalls are often colourfully dec orated with bfown-up, twisted and intertwined condoms shaped to resemble objects such as ships and animals

If the number of people now asking for condoms is any indication of the project's sue cesa, organisers can take heart. Figures quoted in quar terly reports of Mardan's Urban Community Development Council (UCDC), the body administering the project, show that 76.600 condoms were distributed tn the first three months of 1991 — as against only 18.250 for the same period In 1989. The reports were submitted to the United States-based Pathfinder International organisation.