Asif Ali Zardari and Benazir married in 1951 and had 3 children
Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007) was born in Karachi. She was the daughter of the politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the man who went on to lead Pakistan from 1971-7. Benazir was educated at Harvard Uni and subsequently studied political science and economics at Oxford. Her father was executed in 1979, during the rule of Pakistan’s military dictator Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq. Her two brothers also suffered violent deaths, in 1985 and 1996 respectively.
Then Bhutto became the titular head of her father’s party, the Pakistan People’s Party/PPP. Brave woman.. she suffered frequent house arrest from 1979 to 1984. In exile from 1984-6, she returned to Pakistan after the lifting of martial law and soon became the primary figure in the political opposition to Zia. President Zia died in Aug 1988 in an unexplained plane crash, leaving a power vacuum at the centre of Pakistani politics. In the next elections, Bhutto’s PPP won the single largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly and she became prime minister on Dec 1988, heading a coalition government.
She served 2 terms as Pakistan’s prime minister, in 1988–90 and 1993–6. This modern, progressive Pakistani politician became the first woman leader of a Muslim nation. There was hope among women in particular that her premiership would mark a new era of multi-party democracy, education for women and better relations with India. She claimed her electoral victory was a key point for Islamic women.
She improved housing, healthcare services, expanded the reach of electricity to remote villages and built many schools in Pakistan during her term. But Bhutto didn’t seem able to control Pakistan’s poverty, government corruption or crime. In Aug 1990 President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed her government on charges of corruption and called for new elections. Bhutto’s PPP lost the Oct 1990 national elections, so she led the parliamentary opposition against her successor Nawaz Sharif.
In Oct 1993 elections, the PPP won a majority of votes and Bhutto became head of the coalition. With renewed allegations of corruption, economic mismanagement and criminal activity, her government was again dismissed in Nov 1996, this time by Pres Farooq Leghari. In the 1997 elections, Bhutto’s PPP suffered a decisive loss to Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League party.
Sharif’s administration continued to pursue the corruption charges against Bhutto. In 1999 Bhutto and her husband, Senator Asif Ali Zardari, were both convicted of corruption, a decision overturned by the Supreme Court because of evidence of governmental interference. Bhutto demands that the charges against her and her husband be dropped were denied, ending negotiations with the Musharraf government regarding the end of exile. Knowing about arrest warrants if she returned to Pakistan, Bhutto remained in exile in London and Dubai.
Benazir Bhutto receiving the World Tolerance Award from Michail Gorbachev
Women's World Awards ceremony, Leipzig, Nov 2005.
The 2000 legislation that prohibited a court-convicted individual from holding party office meant that Bhutto’s leadership could exclude the PPP from elections. And because of Musharraf’s 2002 decree banning prime ministers from serving a 3rd term, Bhutto was in any case banned. In response to these obstacles, the PPP split and registered a new, distinct branch called the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPPP). Legally free from the restrictions brought on the PPP by Bhutto’s leadership, the PPPP participated in the 2002 elections, in which it earned a strong vote. But Bhutto’s terms for cooperation with the military government re dropping charges about Bhutto and husband, were still denied. In 2004 her husband was released from prison on bail and joined Bhutto in exile. Before the 2007 elections, talk began to circulate of Bhutto’s return home.
Shortly before Musharraf’s re-election as President, in a power-sharing arrangement between Bhutto and Musharraf’s military regime, he finally granted Bhutto a long-sought amnesty for the corruption charges brought against her by Sharif. But the Supreme Court challenged Musharraf’s right to grant the amnesty, seeing it as unconstitutional. Still, in 18th Oct 2007, Bhutto returned to Karachi after 8 years of self-imposed exile; she had to campaign for the upcoming national elections. Celebrations marking her return were marred by an attack on her motorcade from the airport, in which 139 of her supporters were killed but Bhutto survived.
before huge crowd of her supporters
Soon Bhutto was assassinated by a teen bomber in Dec 2007, while at a Rawalpindi election campaign rally. From British Raj to American Imperialism, the book by Taliban Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, said Bhutto was targeted by the militants because she was planning to target the mujahideen and create a government sympathetic to Western interests. Others believed she was distrusted by the military, which used corruption allegations to remove her from power; that the power-sharing arrangement between Bhutto and Musharraf was never going to happen. Others said her husband Zadari was greedy for power himself. But another 24 of her innocent fans who died were seen as just collateral damage.
Soon Bhutto was assassinated by a teen bomber in Dec 2007, while at a Rawalpindi election campaign rally. From British Raj to American Imperialism, the book by Taliban Mufti Noor Wali Mehsud, said Bhutto was targeted by the militants because she was planning to target the mujahideen and create a government sympathetic to Western interests. Others believed she was distrusted by the military, which used corruption allegations to remove her from power; that the power-sharing arrangement between Bhutto and Musharraf was never going to happen. Others said her husband Zadari was greedy for power himself. But another 24 of her innocent fans who died were seen as just collateral damage.
Her assassination caused civil unrest in Pakistan. Bhutto's supporters filled the streets, setting up road blocks, lighting fires and chanting anti-Taliban slogans. Military leaders in Pakistan denied any suggestion of state complicity in violent jihadist attacks. And in any case, the police inquiries were so poorly managed as to suggest they never wanted to find guilty parties beyond the low-level plotters they had already arrested. Scotland Yard secured the appointment of a UN commission of inquiry to examine Bhutto’s death, but it too was deliberately blocked by the military and politicians. In fact Pakistan's main government prosecutor in the murder case was shot dead outside the Islamabad court in 2013.