Benazir Bhutto

Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto
بينظير بُھٹو
Bhutto in 2006
11th and 13th Prime Minister of Pakistan
In office 18 October 1993 – 5 November 1996
President	Wasim Sajjad (acting) Farooq Leghari
Preceded by	Nawaz Sharif Moeenuddin Ahmad Qureshi (caretaker)
Succeeded by	Malik Meraj Khalid (caretaker) Nawaz Sharif
In office 2 December 1988 – 6 August 1990
President	Ghulam Ishaq Khan
Preceded by	Muhammad Khan Junejo
Succeeded by	Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi (caretaker) Nawaz Sharif
Other political offices Leader of the Opposition In office 17 February 1997 – 12 October 1999 Preceded by Nawaz Sharif Succeeded by Fazl-ur-Rehman In office 6 November 1990 – 18 April 1993 Preceded by Khan Abdul Wali Khan Succeeded by Nawaz Sharif Chairperson of the Pakistan Peoples Party In office 12 November 1982 – 27 December 2007 Preceded by Nusrat Bhutto Succeeded by Asif Ali Zardari Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
Personal details
Born	(1953-06-21)21 June 1953 Karachi, Federal Capital Territory, Pakistan
Died	27 December 2007(2007-12-27) (aged 54) Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan
Manner of death	Assassination
Resting place	Bhutto family mausoleum
Political party	Pakistan People's Party
Spouse	Asif Ali Zardari ​ (m. 1987)​
Relations	Bhutto family Zardari family
Children	Bilawal Bakhtawar Aseefa
Parent(s)	Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Nusrat Bhutto
Education	Radcliffe College (AB) Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (BA) St Catherine's College, Oxford (MSt)
Signature
Nickname(s)	BB Iron Lady

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Benazir Bhutto^[a] (21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician and stateswoman who served as the 11th and 13th prime minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. She was the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. Ideologically a liberal and a secularist, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.

Of mixed Sindhi, Persian, and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, wealthy aristocratic family. She studied at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, where she was President of the Oxford Union. Her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar Bhutto, was elected prime minister on a socialist platform in 1973. She returned to Pakistan in 1977, shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto and her mother Nusrat took control of the PPP and led the country's Movement for the Restoration of Democracy; Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military government and then self-exiled to Britain in 1984. She returned in 1986 and—influenced by Thatcherite economics—transformed the PPP's platform from a socialist to a liberal one, before leading it to victory in the 1988 election. As prime minister, her attempts at reform were stifled by conservative and Islamist forces, including President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the powerful military. Her administration was accused of corruption and nepotism and dismissed by Khan in 1990. Intelligence services rigged that year's election to ensure a victory for the conservative Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI), at which point Bhutto became Leader of the Opposition.

After the IJI government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was also dismissed on corruption charges, Bhutto led the PPP to victory in the 1993 elections. In her second term, she oversaw economic privatisation and attempts to advance women's rights. Her government was damaged by several controversies, including the assassination of her brother Murtaza, a failed 1995 coup d'état, and a further bribery scandal involving her and her husband Asif Ali Zardari; in response, President Farooq Leghari dismissed her government. The PPP lost the 1997 election and in 1998 she went into self-exile, living between Dubai and London for the next decade. A widening corruption inquiry culminated in a 2003 conviction in a Swiss court. Following the United States–brokered negotiations with then president, general Pervez Musharraf, she returned to Pakistan in 2007 to compete in the 2008 elections; her platform emphasised civilian oversight of the military and opposition to growing Islamist violence. After a political rally in Rawalpindi, she was assassinated. The Salafi jihadi group al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, although the involvement of the Pakistani Taliban and rogue elements of the intelligence services was widely suspected. She was buried at her family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Baksh.

Bhutto was a controversial figure who remains divisive. She was often criticised as being politically inexperienced, was accused of being corrupt, and faced much opposition from Pakistan's Islamist lobby for her secularist and modernising agenda. In the early years of her career, she was nevertheless domestically popular and also attracted support from the international community, seen as a champion of democracy. Posthumously, she came to be regarded as an icon for women's rights due to her political success in a male-dominated society.

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