Test of Wills

At the remote burial ground of Garhi Khuda Baksh, 200 miles northeast of Karachi, hundreds of Pakistanis gathered to pay their respects to Shahnawaz Bhutto, 27, son of the late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances on the French Riviera last month. Thousands of others were trying to reach the area in the expectation that the funeral would be held this week. But Pakistan's President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq was taking no chances that the outpouring of sympathy for the Bhutto family would turn into a huge and possibly unmanageable political demonstration. Zia conveyed his condolences to young Bhutto's mother, then placed military forces on alert in Sind province, the traditional political turf of Bhutto and his Pakistan People's Party. Soldiers searched all incoming cars, buses, trucks and trains. The government also placed P.P.P. leaders under house arrest and forbade many prominent figures to attend the pending rites.

Shahnawaz Bhutto was found dead on July 18 in the Cannes apartment where he lived with his Afghan-born wife and three-year-old daughter. French authorities, hoping to ascertain what killed him, did not release the body for three weeks. The delay was attributed partly to the fact that since the burial would be in Pakistan, there would be no further opportunity to conduct forensic tests. Inevitably, Bhutto's sudden and unexplained death spawned rumors of political intrigue, including the possibility that he had been murdered.

After the downfall and death of his father, who was overthrown by Zia in 1977 and subsequently executed, Shahnawaz, the youngest of the four Bhutto children, joined his brother Murtaza in organizing a group called Al-Zulfikar, which was dedicated to overthrowing the Zia regime. It was based in Afghanistan and rumored to have ties to Libya and Syria. Last year the two brothers were convicted in absentia for involvement in the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines jet, during which a Pakistani diplomat was killed. Over the past 18 months, Shahnawaz was said to have given up his underground activities and become a partner in a fashionable Geneva restaurant. But French police said they found two revolvers and several forged passports in his apartment, along with the first draft of a book on Pakistan he had been writing.

Zia's main worry was not so much Shahnawaz's funeral as the anticipated return of the former Prime Minister's daughter Benazir, 32, and the emotional welcome she was expected to receive. Benazir, who was educated at Harvard and Oxford, is her father's political heir and the present leader of the P.P.P. After her release from imprisonment and house arrest in 1984, Benazir moved to London and has led the party from exile. Although the P.P.P. has been banned for the past eight years, it is still the most popular party in Pakistan. It is also the dominant member of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy, a coalition of political groups that has been pressing Zia to end martial law and restore full parliamentary democracy. The coalition boycotted national elections called by Zia last February to establish an elected National Assembly; political parties were not allowed to participate. The M.R.D. also opposes Zia's attempt to get the Assembly to ratify constitutional changes that would ensure a permanent governmental role for the military and legalize all actions taken by his regime under martial law.

Zia's dilemma, after eight years of military dictatorship, is that the more he tries to eradicate the Bhutto legend, the more powerful it becomes. Many Pakistanis are still bitter that Zia allowed Prime Minister Bhutto's body to be buried without a member of the family present. When news of Shahnawaz's death reached Pakistan, thousands went to the Bhutto home in Karachi to pay their respects. People burned stacks of an Urdu-language newspaper that suggested Shahnawaz may have died from alcohol and drugs. In Sind province, most business came to a standstill. Some defied the ban on entering Sind for the funeral rites. Said Malik Mohammed Qasim, secretary-general of one faction of the Pakistan Muslim League: "To attend a funeral is the basic right of a citizen, and to prevent a Muslim from doing so is un-Islamic." The struggle between Zia and the Bhutto family is evidently far from over.