Benazir Bhutto

Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto (Karachi, 21 June 1953 – Rawalpindi, 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician who served as prime minister of the country from 1988 and 1990 and again from 1993 and 1996. She was also the leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), a leftist party founded by her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was also prime minister of Pakistan in the 1970s.

Benazir was born in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and the capital of the Sindh province, the oldest of four children born to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Nusrat Ispahani Bhutto. Because of her fair complexion, Benazir was called by family members her “Pinky”. Although she came from a Muslim family, she studied at schools run by the Catholic Church in Pakistan.

In 1969, at the age of 16, Benazir moved to the United States, where she studied at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then at Harvard University, where she obtained a bachelor’s degree in comparative government. As a student in the United States, she took part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War and for women’s rights. From 1973 and 1977 she studied political science, economics and diplomacy at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University. She joined the Oxford Union, the famous debating society, and became the first Asian woman to be elected its president.

In 1977 she returned to Pakistan, where she was given a minor post in the government. However, some days after her arrival her father was deposed by General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, who became the country's dictator until 1988. Ali Bhutto was arrested and hanged on 4 April 1979 and Benazir and her mother succeeding as leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party. Regarded as a threat, Benazir was placed under house arrest by the dictatorship. In 1984 she was allowed by the government to travel to London to receive medical treatment for ear injury she suffered during an arrest. While she was United Kingdom, her brother Shahnawaz, who was living in Paris, was poisoned. Benazir brought her brother’s body to Pakistan to be buried and accused the government of being responsible for his death, an act that led her to be exiled from the country.