Benazir Bhutto

Who is Benazir Bhutto?

Benazir Bhutto was a Pakistani politician who became the first woman to head a democratically elected government in a Muslim-majority nation. Born in Karachi in 1953 into a prominent political family, she was the daughter of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She studied at Harvard University (Radcliffe College) and later at Oxford, where she was elected president of the Oxford Union. After her father's execution in 1979 under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq, she led the Pakistan Peoples Party through years of imprisonment and exile. She became Prime Minister in 1988 and again in 1993, serving two non-consecutive terms marked by both reform efforts and political controversy. After years abroad she returned to Pakistan in 2007 to contest elections and was assassinated in Rawalpindi in December of that year, becoming a lasting symbol of democratic struggle.

Sources: Benazir Bhutto, 'Daughter of the East: An Autobiography' (Hamish Hamilton, 1988) · Benazir Bhutto, 'Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West' (Harper, 2008)