Ehtisham Ashraf Malik
Benazir Bhutto was the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan, serving two non-consecutive terms in 1988–90 and then 1993–96. A scion of the politically powerful Bhutto family, she was the eldest daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a former prime minister himself who founded Pakistan People’s Party(PPP)..Benazir Bhutto was born at Karachi’s Pinto Hospital on 21 June 1953, She was the eldest child of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, of Sindhi Rajput ethnicity, and Begum Nusrat Ispahani, of Iranian Kurdish descent. She had three younger siblings Murtaza,Shahnawaz and Sanam. According to Benazir her mother’s Kurdish culture played a big role in her becoming the Prime Minister. She attended the Lady Jennings Nursery School and Convent of Jesus and Mary in Karachi. After two years at the Rawalpindi Presentation Convent, she was sent to the Jesus and Mary Convent at Murree. She passed her O-level examinations aged 15. She then went on to complete her A-Levels at the Karachi Grammar School. After completing her early education in Pakistan, she pursued her higher education in the United States. From 1969 to 1973 she attended Radcliffe College at Harvard University. Bhutto later called her time at Harvard “four of the happiest years of my life” and said it formed “the very basis of her belief in democracy”.The next phase of her education happened in Britain. Between 1973 and 1977 Bhutto studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she took additional courses in International Law and Diplomacy. After LMH she attended St Catherine’s College, Oxford and in December 1976 she was elected president of the Oxford Union, becoming the first Asian woman to head the prestigious debating society. Her undergraduate career was dogged by controversy, partly relating to her father’s unpopularity with student politicians. Following the hanging of Zulfikar, Benazir and Murtaza were arrested. After PPP’s victory in the local elections, General Zia postponed the national elections indefinitely and moved Benazir, Murtaza, and their mother Nusrat from Karachi to Larkana Central Jail. This was the seventh time Nusrat and her children had been arrested within two years of the military coup. In 1982, three years after her father’s assassination, 29-year-old Benazir Bhutto became the chairperson of the PPP a political party, making her the first woman in Pakistan to head a major political party. On 18 December 1987, she married Asif Ali Zardari in Karachi. The couple had three children two daughters, Bakhtawar and Asifa, and a son, Bilawal. In 1988, she became the first woman to be elected as the head of an Islamic state’s government, she also remains Pakistan’s only female prime minister. Following her dismissal in 1990, the Election Commission of Pakistan called for the new parliamentary elections in 1990. The Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (Islamic Democratic Alliance (IDA) under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif won the majority in the Parliament; Bhutto accepted her defeat soon after. For the first time in the history of Pakistan, conservatives had a chance to rule the country, and Sharif became the 12th Prime Minister of Pakistan and Bhutto became Leader of the Opposition for the next five years.On 19 October 1993, Benazir Bhutto was sworn as Prime Minister for second term allowing her to continue her reform initiatives. On 20 July 1996, Qazi Hussain Ahmed of Jamaat e Islami announced to start protests against government alleging corruption. Qazi Hussain resigned from senate on 27 September and announced to start long march against Benazir government. Protest started on 27 October 1996 by Jamaat e Islami and opposition parties. On 4 November 1996, Bhutto’s government was dismissed by President Leghari primarily because of corruption and Murtaza’s death, who used the Eighth Amendment discretionary powers to dissolve the government.Her image in the country widely became positive and the PPP seemed to be coming back in the government as soon the 2002 elections were scheduled to take place. Therefore, in 2002, President Musharraf amended Pakistan’s constitution to ban prime ministers from serving more than two terms. This disqualified Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif from ever holding the office again. This move was widely considered to be a direct attack on them. In mid 2007, Bhutto declared her intention to return to Pakistan by the end of the year. However Musharraf said he would not allow her to ahead of the country’s general election, due late 2007 or early 2008. Still, it was speculated that she may have been offered the office of Prime Minister again. At the same time, the US appeared to be pushing for a deal in which Musharraf remained president, but stepped down as military head, and either Bhutto or one of her nominees became prime minister. After eight years in exile in Dubai and London, Bhutto returned to Karachi on 18 October 2007, to prepare for the 2008 national elections. En route to a rally in Karachi on 18 October 2007, two explosions occurred shortly after Bhutto had landed and left Jinnah International Airport. She was not injured but the explosions, later found to be a suicide-bomb attack, killed 136 people and injured at least 450. The dead included at least 50 of the security guards from her PPP who had formed a human chain around her truck to keep potential bombers away, as well as six police officers. A number of senior officials were injured. Bhutto, after nearly ten hours of the parade through Karachi, ducked back down into the steel command center to remove her sandals from her swollen feet, moments before the bomb went off. She was escorted unharmed from the scene. On 27 December 2007, Benazir Bhutto was killed while leaving a campaign rally for the PPP at Liaquat National Bagh in the run-up to the January 2008 parliamentary elections. After entering her bulletproof vehicle, Bhutto stood up through its sunroof to wave to the crowds. At this point, a gunman fired shots at her, and subsequently explosives were detonated near the vehicle killing approximately 20 people. Bhutto was critically wounded and was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital. She was taken into surgery, and pronounced dead. The cause of death, whether it was gunshot wounds, the explosion, or a combination thereof, was not fully determined until February 2008. Eventually, Scotland Yard investigators concluded that it was due to blunt force trauma to the head as she was tossed by the explosion. She was buried alongside her father in Naudero near Larkana.
