Benazir Bhutto - great leader, but exiled and assassinated.

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.

The last photo of Bhutto taken before she was assassinated

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.

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.

The case is still pending in the Lahore High Court’s Rawalpindi bench.