Benazir Bhutto
Template:Short description Template:Use Pakistani English Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox officeholder Template:Contains special characters Template:Contains special characters Benazir BhuttoTemplate:Efn (21 June 1953 – 27 December 2007) was a Pakistani politician and stateswoman who served as the 11th 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 Sindhi, Persian and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to the politically-significant aristocratic Bhutto family. She studied at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, where she served as President of the Oxford Union. She returned to Pakistan in 1977 during her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's socialist government, shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and later executed. Bhutto and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, took control of the PPP and led the country's Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD). Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by Zia-ul-Haq's military government and self-exiled to Great 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 within the country, including President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the Pakistani military. Her administration, having been accused of corruption and nepotism, was dismissed by Khan in 1990 with the following election being rigged by Intelligence services to ensure a victory for the conservative Islamic Democratic Alliance (IJI), at which point Bhutto became the Leader of the Opposition.
After the IJI government of prime minister Nawaz Sharif was also dismissed on corruption charges, Bhutto once again 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 beset with instability, including the assassination of her brother Murtaza, a failed coup d'état in 1995, and a bribery scandal involving her and her husband Asif Ali Zardari; in response, President Farooq Leghari dismissed her government, following which the PPP incurred a historic defeat in the 1997 election, and in 1998 she went into self-exile once more, 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 Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, she returned to Pakistan in 2007 to run 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 in December 2007. The Salafi jihadist militant group al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, although involvement of the Pakistani Taliban and rogue elements of the intelligence services were also hypothesised. She was buried at her family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.
Opinions on Bhutto were deeply divided. Pakistan's Islamist groups and conservative forces often accused her of being politically inexperienced, corrupt, and opposed her secularist, modernising agenda. In the early years of her career, however, she was nevertheless domestically popular and also attracted support from the international community, being 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.
Early life and education
Bhutto was born at Pinto's Nursing Home on 21 June 1953 in Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan.Template:Sfnm Her father was the politician Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and her mother was Begum Nusrat Ispahani. The latter was born in Isfahan, Persia (now Iran) to a wealthy Persian merchant family of partial Kurdish descent.Template:Sfnm Zulfikar was the son of Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a prominent politician who had served as Prime Minister of the Junagadh State.Template:Sfnm The Bhuttos were aristocratic,Template:Sfnm wealthy landlords from Sindh,Template:Sfn part of the waderos or landed gentry.Template:Sfn They were Sunni Muslims,Template:Sfn although Nusrat had been born into a Shia Muslim family before converting to Sunnism on her marriage.Template:Sfn
The couple had married in September 1951,Template:Sfn and Benazir was their first child.Template:Sfnm She was given the name of an aunt who had died young.Template:Sfn The Bhuttos' three younger children were Murtaza (born 1954), Sanam (1957), and Shahnawaz (1958).Template:Sfnm When the elderly Shah Nawaz died in 1957, Zulfikar inherited the family's land holdings, making him extremely wealthy.Template:Sfn
Benazir's first language was English; as a child she spoke Urdu less frequently although she was fluent, and barely spoke the local Sindhi language. Her mother taught her some Persian as a child.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>Template:Sfnm Benazir initially attended the Lady Jennings Nursery School in Karachi.Template:Sfnm She was then sent to the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Karachi and from there to the Jesus and Mary Convent, a boarding school in Murree.Template:Sfnm Murree is near the border with India, and during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 Bhutto and the other pupils underwent air-raid practices.Template:Sfnm Taking her exams in December 1968, Bhutto passed her O-levels with high grades.Template:Sfnm
Throughout her youth, Bhutto idolised her father,Template:Sfn and he, in turn, encouraged her educational development in contravention of traditional approaches to women then pervasive in Pakistan.Template:Sfn Relations between her parents were however strained during her childhood; Zulfikar embarked on extra-marital affairs with other women, and when Nusrat objected he had her thrown out of their house. She moved to Iran, but after Zulfikar prevented her children from joining her there, she returned to Pakistan six months later, settling in Karachi.Template:Sfn Throughout her life, Bhutto never publicly acknowledged this internal family discord.Template:Sfn
When Bhutto was five, her father became the cabinet minister for energy, and when she was nine he became the country's foreign minister.Template:Sfnm From an early age, she was exposed to foreign diplomats and figures who were visiting her father, among them Zhou Enlai, Henry Kissinger, and Hubert Humphrey.Template:Sfn When she was thirteen, he resigned from the government and a year later established his own political party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).Template:Sfnm The PPP used the motto "Islam is our faith, democracy is our policy, socialism is our economy. All power to the people."Template:Sfn It employed a populist strategy to attract votes, promising "roti, kapra aur makan" (bread, clothes, and housing) for every Pakistani and insisting that the disputed territory of Kashmir would be transferred from Indian to Pakistani control.Template:Sfn Benazir immediately joined.Template:Sfn Amid riots against the government of President Ayub Khan, in 1968 Zulfikar was arrested and imprisoned for three months, during which he wrote to Benazir to encourage her studies.Template:Sfnm
University studies
From 1969 to 1973, Bhutto studied for an undergraduate degree at Radcliffe College, Harvard University.Template:Sfnm She started when she was sixteen, which was younger than normal, but Zulfikar had pulled strings to allow her premature admittance.Template:Sfn Zulfikar asked his friend John Kenneth Galbraith, an economics professor at Harvard who had formerly been a U.S. ambassador to India, to be her local guardian.Template:Sfn Through him, Bhutto met his son Peter Galbraith, who became a lifelong friend.Template:Sfnm Murtaza joined Bhutto at Harvard a year later.Template:Sfn Bhutto found it difficult adjusting to life in the United States. A fellow student said she "cried most of her first semester",Template:Sfn although Bhutto later called her time at Harvard "four of the happiest years of my life".Template:Sfnm She became a campus tour guide with the Crimson Key Society and the social secretary of her dormitory, Eliot House.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn She involved herself in campaigns against American involvement in the Vietnam War, joining a Moratorium Day protest on Boston Common.Template:Sfnm She encountered activists involved in second wave feminism although was sceptical of some of the views expressed within the movement.Template:Sfn At Harvard, Bhutto majored in comparative government and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in 1973.<ref>WOMAN IN THE NEWS; Daughter of Determination: Benazir Bhutto Template:Webarchive NY Times</ref>Template:Sfn
In 1971, while she was at Harvard, Zulfikar invited her to join him in New York City, where he was involved in a United Nations Security Council meeting on that year's Indo-Pakistani War.Template:Sfnm In December 1971, Zulfikar assumed the presidency of Pakistan, the first democratically elected leader after 13 years of military rule.Template:Sfnm In 1972, Benazir accompanied her father to the India-Pakistan Summit in Simla as a replacement for her mother, who was ill.Template:Sfnm There, she was introduced to the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.Template:Sfn While in Simla, she attracted much attention from both local and national Indian press,Template:Sfn the first time she received such notice.Template:Sfn She attributed this to the fact that—in her words—she "symbolised a new generation. I had never been an Indian. I had been born in independent Pakistan. I was free of the complexes and prejudices which had torn Indians and Pakistanis apart in the bloody trauma of partition."Template:Sfn In 1974, she flew to Lahore to accompany her father at the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation's summit. Here, she met a number of the assembled senior Muslim world leaders, who included Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, Egypt's Anwar Sadat, Syria's Hafez al-Assad, Saudi Arabia's Faisal, and Jordan's Hussein.Template:Sfnm
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In autumn 1973, Bhutto relocated to the United Kingdom and began studying for a second undergraduate degree, in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.Template:Sfnm After three years, she received a second-class degree.Template:Sfn At her father's insistence, she remained in Oxford to study for a one-year postgraduate degree,Template:Sfnm reading international law and diplomacy;Template:Sfn at this point she attended St Catherine's College, Oxford.<ref>
{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
|CitationClass=web }}</ref> One of her fellow students at Oxford stated that there, she "epitomised the classic spoilt rich girl from a third world country".Template:Sfnm She nevertheless made friends, who later described her as a humorous and intellectually curious individual.Template:Sfn In 1977, she was elected President of the Oxford Union debating society,Template:Sfnm the first Asian woman to hold that post.Template:Sfnm After her three-month term was up, she was succeeded by her close friend, Victoria Schofield.Template:Sfn Bhutto was also active in the local Conservative Association and it is through this connection that she is widely believed to have introduced future British Prime Minister, Theresa May, to her future husband Philip May.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Despite the ongoing tensions between Pakistan and India, she interacted socially with Indian students,Template:Sfn and while at Oxford also made proposals of marriage to two fellow Pakistani students, but was rebuffed on both occasions.Template:Sfn Bhutto biographer Brooke Allen thought that her time at Oxford was "almost certainly the happiest, most carefree time of her life".Template:Sfn
At Oxford, she led a campaign calling for the university to give her father an honorary degree; she gained the support of her father's old tutor, the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper. Bhutto's campaign was opposed by counter-protests, who believed that her father's supposed involvement in the persecution of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and atrocities during the Bangladesh Liberation War made him unsuitable. Ultimately, the university declined to award the honorary degree.Template:Sfnm In later years, Bhutto acknowledged that at this time she had been ignorant of the Pakistani Army's complicity in the atrocities in Bangladesh,Template:Sfn although always maintained that her father was blameless on the issue.Template:Sfn After her Oxford education, she returned to Pakistan in June 1977, where she was scheduled to work at the Prime Minister's office and the "Inter-Provincial Council of Common Interests" during the rest of the summer.Template:Sfnm Intent on a career in the Pakistani Foreign Service,Template:Sfnm she was scheduled to take the service's entrance exams later in the year.Template:Sfn
Zia's Pakistan
Zulfikar's death and Benazir's arrest
In July 1977, Zulfikar Bhutto—who had just been re-elected in a general election—was overthrown in a military coup ("Operation Fair Play") led by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the Chief of Army Staff.Template:Sfnm Both Zulfikar and Benazir believed that Zia's coup had been assisted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Zulfikar claimed that in a 1975 meeting, U.S. diplomat Henry Kissinger had told him that the U.S. would make "a horrible example" of him if he did not terminate Pakistan's efforts to build a nuclear bomb.Template:Sfn Now in control of the country, Zia suspended the constitution,Template:Sfn and initiated a regime that combined military rule with social programs designed to further the Islamisation of Pakistani society according to Islamic fundamentalist principles.Template:Sfnm Socialists, intellectuals, and journalists were arrested.Template:Sfn Zulfikar, too, was arrested, initially for less than a month.Template:Sfnm After a crowd of over one million people greeted Zulfikar's release in Karachi and demonstrations were held in support of the ousted president, Zia decided to eliminate him permanently.Template:Sfn
In September, Zulfikar was re-arrested and charged with the 1974 murder of Muhammad Ahmed Khan Kasuri, the father of Ahmed Raza Kasuri, a vocal critic of Zulfikar's government.Template:Sfnm After the coup, Bhutto's brothers were sent abroad to canvass international support for their father.Template:Sfnm Bhutto and her mother remained in Pakistan, although they were repeatedly detained for short periods.Template:Sfnm When she was able, Bhutto visited her father in prison.Template:Sfnm She and her mother put out a book about their father and encouraged PPP supporters to demonstrate in support of him.Template:Sfn She also assisted in the preparation of his defence case, which was put before first the Lahore High Court, which sentenced him to death, and then the Supreme Court, which upheld that decision.Template:Sfn Former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark attended the trial, relating that it was a kangaroo court and that Zulfikar did not receive a fair trial.Template:Sfn Just before his execution, Zulfikar urged his wife and daughter to leave Pakistan, but they refused.Template:Sfn He was executed by hanging in April 1979.Template:Sfnm Benazir and Nusrat were then imprisoned for six months, before being released and placed under house arrest for a further six months. The two women were only fully released in April 1980.Template:Sfn
After the coup, Zulfikar had appointed his wife co-chair of the PPP,Template:Sfn while in October 1977 Benazir was appointed to the PPP's central committee.Template:Sfn After Zulfikar's death, Benazir replaced his role in the party, becoming its co-leader.Template:Sfn In February 1981, she formally established the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), a group that brought together the PPP with other political parties in the country: the Pakistan Muslim League, Pakistan Democratic Party, Mazdoor Kisan Party, National Awami Party, Quomi Mahaz-e-Azadi, Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Islam, and the Tahrik-i-Istiqlal.Template:Sfnm The MRD called for a four-point program: an end to martial law, the restoration of the 1973 constitution, parliamentary elections, and the transfer of political power from the military to the elected representatives.<ref>https://www.ijssh.net/papers/243-W00007.pdf?</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> There was nevertheless much mutual suspicion among the parties in the MRD, with Bhutto having reluctantly allowed groups that firmly opposed her father's government to join.Template:Sfn
From abroad, her brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, turned to paramilitary action, founding the Al Zulfikar group which trained its members to carry out acts of assassination and sabotage to oust Zia's military government.Template:Sfnm After Al Zulfikar orchestrated the 1981 Pakistan International Airlines hijacking, the government used this as the pretext for re-arresting Bhutto and her mother in March.Template:Sfnm Bhutto disapproved of the hijacking, believing that it strengthened Zia's hand;Template:Sfnm that she was punished for it may have exacerbated tensions with her brothers.Template:Sfn In July 1981, Nusrat was released so that she could seek medical treatment for cancer abroad, but Bhutto was not.Template:Sfnm She was kept for a time in Karachi before being moved to Sukkur prison and then back again to Karachi.Template:Sfnm During much of this period, she was held in solitary confinement,Template:Sfnm and experienced a range of health problems, including hair loss, gynaecological issues, and anorexia.Template:Sfnm In December, she was moved into house arrest, where she would remain for two years.Template:Sfn In the United States—a key ally of Zia's regime—Peter Galbraith helped rally support for Bhutto, including from the politicians Claiborne Pell and James Buckley.Template:Sfnm When Zia visited Washington D.C. in December 1982, they raised the issue of Bhutto's imprisonment with him.Template:Sfnm As international pressure mounted, the Pakistani government agreed to release her, placing her on a flight to Geneva in January 1984.Template:Sfnm
Release and self-imposed exile
From Geneva, Bhutto proceeded to the United Kingdom, undergoing surgery on her mastoid before renting a flat in London's Barbican Estate.Template:Sfnm There, she socialised with friends, going shopping, hosting dinner parties, and visiting the cinema.Template:Sfn One friend said that after her time in prison she remained in "a mildly traumatised state, jumping at sudden noise and worrying about who might be spying on her".Template:Sfn In March, Bhutto visited New York City and Washington D.C., where she met with media figures and middle-ranking government officials but was kept at bay by the administration of President Ronald Reagan.Template:Sfnm Over the coming few years, Bhutto made several additional visits to the United States,Template:Sfn spoke to the European Parliament in Strasbourg,Template:Sfn visited the Soviet Union,Template:Sfn and undertook the Umrah pilgrimage to Mecca.Template:Sfnm
While in exile, Benazir became a rallying point for the PPP.Template:Sfn Her flat became the unofficial headquarters of its members in exile; these volunteers devoted themselves to raising international awareness of the political prisoners being held by Zia's regime.Template:Sfnm Although she was the party's acting chairperson, many of its elder members were unhappy with this situation, believing her insufficiently committed to socialism and fearing that the party would become nothing more than a Bhutto family fiefdom.Template:Sfn Murtaza believed that it was he, and not Benazir, who was their father's designated political heir; as evidence, he cited that he had been asked to manage his father's Larkana constituency in the 1977 general election.Template:Sfn Bhutto biographer Shyam Bhatia thought that this was probably Zulfikar's intention, as the latter would have recognised the significant impediments to a woman being elected leader in a conservative Islamic society like Pakistan.Template:Sfn Benazir nevertheless maintained that her father had always wanted her to become a politician.Template:Sfnm
In July 1985, Shahnawaz died under unexplained circumstances in the French city of Cannes.Template:Sfnm Bhutto varyingly claimed that Shahnawaz had been murdered by his wife, Raehana,Template:Sfnm or had been killed on the orders of Zia.Template:Sfn Zia's government allowed her to bring her brother's body to Pakistan in August, where it could be interred in the family cemetery at Larkana.Template:Sfnm Shortly after the burial, she was arrested and detained under house arrest in Karachi until November, at which point she was released and returned to Europe.Template:Sfnm In December 1985, martial law was lifted in Pakistan and Bhutto decided to return home. She arrived at Lahore Airport in April 1986, where she was greeted by a large crowd.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Sfnm An estimated two million people came to see her speak at Iqbal Park, where she rallied against Zia's regime.Template:Sfn She then visited Sindh, Punjab, and Balochistan, speaking to further crowds,Template:Sfnm and re-established links with the MRD, taking part in a pro-democracy rally on Independence Day on 14 August.Template:Sfn Following the rally, she was again arrested and detained for several weeks in Landhi Jail.Template:Sfnm
Back in Pakistan, she agreed to an arranged marriage; her mother selected Asif Ali Zardari as a suitable husband.Template:Sfnm He was from a landowning family, and his father had obtained additional wealth through the construction and cinema industries.Template:Sfn The marriage ceremony took place in the Clifton Palace Gardens at Karachi in December 1987.Template:Sfnm The event was billed as the "People's Wedding", serving as a de facto political rally,Template:Sfn with a subsequent party in a Lyari stadium being attended by 200,000 people.Template:Sfnm There, some fired Kalashnikovs into the air in celebration, accidentally resulting in one death and multiple injuries.Template:Sfn Bhutto would have been aware that being married gave her an image of respectability which would improve her chances of being elected.Template:Sfnm She kept the Bhutto family name rather than taking that of her new husband.Template:Sfn After the wedding, she soon became pregnant and gave birth to her first son, Bilawal.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>Template:Sfn
1988 Electoral campaign
In May 1988, Zia dissolved the assemblies and called a November election.Template:Sfnm He had not wanted Bhutto to win, and his choice of date may have been deliberately chosen to coincide with the date when Bhutto was projected to give birth, thus hindering her ability to campaign.Template:Sfnm He also sought to hinder her chances by declaring that the election would be held on a non-party basis, with candidates standing as individuals rather than as representatives of a political party.Template:Sfnm Bhutto and the PPP launched a legal challenge against this latter stipulation.Template:Sfnm In August, Zia suddenly died when his aircraft crashed shortly after take-off from Bahawalpur Airport.Template:Sfnm A joint U.S.–Pakistani investigation was unable to ascertain the cause of the crash, although sabotage was widely suspected, with the Soviets, Americans, Indians, and Israelis all presented as potential culprits.Template:Sfnm Bhutto privately attributed it to an act of God.Template:Sfnm After Zia's death, the Supreme Court announced that the election should take place on a party basis, rather than the non-party basis that Zia had desired.Template:Sfnm
Bhutto insisted that the PPP campaign separately from the MRD,Template:Sfn and dropped its socialist platform in favour of economic Thatcherism and a commitment to the free market.Template:Sfn Amid predictions that the PPP would win, it received 18,000 prospective candidates, many offering the party money for their selection; this influx of new members and candidates caused upset among many established members, who felt that Bhutto was deserting them.Template:Sfn In the build-up to the election, there was a great sense of hope among liberal sectors of Pakistani society.Template:Sfn However, Islamic fundamentalists said it was un-Islamic for the country to have a female leader.Template:Sfnm Their propaganda foregrounded what they presented as her un-Islamic behaviour, including a photo of her dancing in a Parisian nightclub.Template:Sfn Zia loyalists and Islamic fundamentalists united to form a new political party, Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI),Template:Sfnm which was funded by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).Template:Sfnm The ISI also engaged in vote rigging in an attempt to secure an IJI victory.Template:Sfnm Despite these difficulties, Bhutto led the PPP to victory in the election, taking 93 of the 205 contested seats.Template:Sfnm The IJI took only 54 seats,Template:Sfn although the party secured control of Punjab, the country's largest and most powerful province.Template:Sfn This meant that the PPP had the largest number of seats, although not a clear majority.Template:Sfnm Both the PPP and IJI courted independent MPs hoping to woo them to their side,Template:Sfn and unsuccessful attempts were also made by the country's right-wing forces to convince some of the elected PPP parliamentarians to switch allegiance to the IJI.Template:Sfnm
President Ghulam Ishaq Khan was constitutionally obliged to invite Bhutto to form the next government, but was reticent to do so. Under growing pressure—including from the U.S., a key ally—he reluctantly did so two weeks after the election.Template:Sfnm To build her government, Bhutto formed a coalition with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party, which had 13 seats in parliament,Template:Sfnm an action that upset the Sindhi nationalist faction within her party.Template:Sfn She was sworn in as the Prime Minister of Pakistan on 2 December 1988.Template:Sfnm Bhutto became the first female prime minister in a Muslim-majority country,Template:Sfnm as well as Pakistan's second nationally elected prime minister.Template:Sfn At 35 years old,Template:Sfn she was the youngest elected leader in the Islamic world,Template:Sfn the world's youngest prime minister,Template:Sfnm and the youngest female prime minister ever elected.Template:Sfn After her election, party workers were encouraged to refer to her as Mohtarma ("respected lady").Template:Sfnm There was hope among many observers that her premiership would mark a new era of multi-party democracy, growing gender equality, and better relations with India.Template:Sfn She personally stated that her electoral victory was "the tipping point in the debate raging in the Muslim world on the role of women in Islam".Template:Sfn
In 1988, Bhutto published her autobiography, sub-titled Daughter of the East in its British edition and Daughter of Destiny in the United States.Template:Sfn It was written with the assistance of an American ghost writer.Template:Sfn Bhutto biographer Brooke Allen stating that it was "pre-eminently a political performance" written for a Western audience, with the intent of "seducing Western opinion and opinion-makers".Template:Sfn As well as whitewashing her father's regime,Template:Sfn Bhutto's autobiography contained several factual falsifications; she wished to present herself as a ground-breaker when it came to gender issues, and thus presented her mother Nusrat as being far more conservative than she really was, for instance falsely claiming that Nusrat had urged her to wear the burqa when she had reached adolescence.Template:Sfn
Prime Minister (1988–1990)
Bhutto's first cabinet was the largest in Pakistan's history.Template:Sfn She appointed herself as the new treasury minister, with her mother as a senior minister without portfolio, and her father-in-law as chairman of the parliamentary public accounts committee, quashing hopes that her administration would depart from the entrenched systems of cronyism in the country.Template:Sfn Most of those in the administration had little political experience.Template:Sfn Various members of the PPP old guard, including Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, left the party in frustration at the pro-capitalist direction she had taken.Template:Sfn
Following her election, there remained significant mistrust between Bhutto and the right-wing military administration; many senior military figures viewed her, like her father, as a threat to their dominant role in Pakistan's political arena.Template:Sfnm The country's three most powerful figures—Chief of Army Staff Aslam Beg, ISI chief Hamid Gul, and President Khan—all had contempt for her family.Template:Sfnm This opposition was substantial and contributed to Bhutto's inability to pass any major legislation during her first term in office.Template:Sfnm However, she had some successes with initiatives to encourage the development of civil society;Template:Sfn she ensured the release of a number of political prisoners detained under the Zia government.Template:Sfnm and lifted the ban on trade unions and student associations.Template:Sfnm She removed many of the constraints imposed on non-governmental organisations,Template:Sfnm and introduced measures to lift the media censorship introduced by Zia's military administrations.Template:Sfnm She entrusted Shamsul Hasan with dismantling the National Press Trust, a conglomerate of over 15 newspapers, but President Khan delayed signing the documents and thus the Trust would only be broken up during her second premiership.Template:Sfn A number of social reforms were carried out, such as the establishment of new literacy centres, new pension rights, and the abolition of admission and bed fees forced upon during the Zia regime.<ref>PPP Government's Achievements</ref>
Among the problems facing Pakistan when Bhutto took the Premiership was soaring employment and high unemployment.Template:Sfnm The Pakistani government was bankrupt, with Zia having borrowed at high-interest rates to pay government wages.Template:Sfn Many of the policy promises she had made in her election campaign were not delivered because the Pakistani state was unable to finance them; she had claimed that a million new homes would be built each year and that universal free education and healthcare would be introduced, none of which was economically feasible for her government to deliver.Template:Sfn The country also faced a growing problem with the illegal narcotics trade, with Pakistan being among the world's largest heroin exporters and the drug's use rapidly increasing domestically.Template:Sfnm Bhutto pledged that she would take tough action on the powerful drug barons.Template:Sfn
Bhutto often argued with Beg, Gul, and Khan over her desired policies, and—according to Allen—"won some battles but ultimately lost the war" against them.Template:Sfn Bhutto succeeded in getting Khan's approval to change two of the country's four provincial governors;Template:Sfn she appointed General Tikka Khan, one of the few senior military officers who were loyal to her, as the Governor of Punjab.Template:Sfn She sought to replace the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Iftikhar Ahmed Sirohey, but President Khan refused to permit this.Template:Sfn Bhutto disliked Khan's hostile attitude toward her, but he had the backing of the military.Template:Sfn In the presidential election, Bhutto initially proposed Malik Qasim, who had been involved in the MRD, as the PPP's nominee, but the military refused to accept this. Bhutto relented and agreed that Khan could be nominated as the PPP's presidential candidate.Template:Sfnm Bhutto also wanted to replace Mahbub ul Haq as a finance minister, but again the military opposed her. Compromising, she accepted ul Haq's continued role as finance minister but appointed Wasim Jafri as her financial advisor.Template:Sfn Beg made it clear to Bhutto that the military would not tolerate her interference in their control of the defence and foreign affairs.Template:Sfn
At the time, 60% of the country's population lived in Punjab province, which was under the control of Zia's protégé, Nawaz Sharif, as provincial Chief Minister.Template:Sfn Both Sharif and Bhutto attempted to remove the other from power,Template:Sfn with Bhutto accusing Sharif of having rigged the election to become Chief Minister.Template:Sfn Sharif benefited from growing Punjabi chauvinism toward the country's Sindhi minority,Template:Sfn as well as a perception that Bhutto—a Sindhi—was attacking the Punjab.Template:Sfn Although Bhutto had long supported greater autonomy for Pakistan's provinces, she opposed it in the case of the Punjab.Template:Sfn Sharif's Punjabi authority refused to accept the federal officials whom Bhutto posted there.Template:Sfn Relations between Bhutto and Pakistan's civil service also deteriorated, causing paralysis of many state affairs; Bhutto spoke of it as "Zia's bureaucracy" and her perceived anti-Punjabi stance impacted many civil servants, of whom 80% were Punjabi.Template:Sfn
In April 1989, opposition parties organised a parliamentary no-confidence vote in Bhutto's leadership, but it was defeated by 12 votes.Template:Sfnm Bhutto claimed that many National Assembly voters had been bribed to vote against her, with $10 million having been supplied for this by a Saudi Salafi cleric, Osama bin Laden, who sought to overthrow her government and replace it with an Islamic theocracy.Template:Sfnm Her conservative critics continued to claim it was un-Islamic for a woman to govern,Template:Sfn and unsuccessfully tried to have Pakistan suspended from the international Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on this basis.Template:Sfn
Foreign policy
During her first premiership, Bhutto went on a number of foreign trips, enhancing her image as the first female prime minister in the Islamic world.Template:Sfnm In these, she sought to attract foreign investment and aid for Pakistan.Template:Sfn She also made efforts to cultivate good relationships with the leaders of Islamic countries who also had good relationships with her father, including Libya's Gaddafi, Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Zayed, and the Saudi royal family.Template:Sfn In 1989, she attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, where Pakistan was re-admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations.Template:Sfn In January 1989, she made a second pilgrimage to Mecca,Template:Sfn and in June visited the U.S. to address both houses of Congress and giving the commencement speech at Harvard.Template:Sfn
As premier, Bhutto was reluctant to challenge the ISI's support for the Islamist mujahideen forces in Afghanistan which were then engaged in a civil war against the country's Marxist–Leninist government.Template:Sfn The U.S. was funneling money to these mujahedeen through Pakistan, although preferred to deal directly with Beg, Gul, and Ishaq Khan rather than through Bhutto.Template:Sfn In April 1989, Gul led an invasion of Afghanistan with the purpose of seizing Jalalabad, which was then to be formed into a capital from which the country's anti-Soviet, Islamist-dominated opposition forces could operate.Template:Sfn When the operation failed and the Pakistanis were driven out by the Afghan Army, Gul blamed Bhutto's administration for the failure, claiming that someone in her entourage had leaked details of the mission to the Afghan government.Template:Sfn Gul was too powerful for Bhutto to force him into retirement, but in May 1989 she transferred him from the ISI to another section of the military, placing a more trusted military figure in his role.Template:Sfnm
Bhutto initially attempted to improve relations with neighbouring India, withdrawing Zia's offer of a no-war pact and announcing the 1972 Simla Agreement as the basis of future relations.Template:Sfnm She invited Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his wife Sonia as her guests for a three-day visit in Islamabad following the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit.Template:Sfnm Rajiv returned on a bilateral visit six months later.Template:Sfn She pleased him by revoking Zia's offer of the Nishan-e-Pakistan award to the former Indian leader Morarji Desai.Template:Sfn The two countries agreed to reduce their military levels along the border and agreed not to attack their respective nuclear installations.Template:Sfnm Bhutto claimed that she terminated support for Sikh separatists active in India, something which Zia had encouraged to destabilise Indian control in their half of the Punjab.Template:Sfn This warming of relations angered many domestic Islamist and conservative forces; they alleged that she and Gandhi were having a sexual relationship,Template:Sfn said that she was secretly an Indian agent,Template:Sfn and also placed renewed emphasis on the fact that Bhutto's paternal grandmother had been born to a Hindu family.Template:Sfn
After accusations of being too conciliatory towards India, Bhutto took a harder line against them, particularly on the Kashmir conflict.Template:Sfn Amid growing Kashmiri protests against Indian rule, in interviews Bhutto expressed support for the Kashmiri Muslim community.Template:Sfnm She called on the United Nations to oversee the Kashmir plebiscite originally promised in 1948.Template:Sfn Bhutto visited a training camp for pro-independence Kashmiris on the Pakistani side of the border and pledged $5 million for their cause; she followed this with further statements in support of the pro-independence groups.Template:Sfn In one speech, she incited Kashmiri Muslims to rise up against their administration.Template:Sfn Later, in a 1993 interview, Bhutto stated that supporting proxy wars in Punjab and Kashmir was the "one right thing" undertaken by Zia, presenting these in part as revenge for India's role in "the humiliating loss of Bangladesh".Template:Sfn
In 1990, Major General Pervez Musharraf proposed a military invasion of Kargil as part of an attempt to annex Kashmir; Bhutto refused to back the plan, believing that the international condemnation would be severe.Template:Sfn<ref name=kapur>Template:Cite book</ref> With both armies mobilising on either side of the border, there were growing fears that tensions over Kashmir could result in a nuclear war between Pakistan and India.Template:Sfn The U.S. sent special envoy Robert Gates to the region to dissuade the Pakistanis from going to war. He could not meet Bhutto—who was in Yemen as part of a tour of the Gulf states—but met with President Khan, informing him that the U.S. would not support Pakistani military action. He convinced Pakistan to step back from hostilities and to disband the Kashmiri training camps in its territory.Template:Sfn
Nuclear policy
After Bhutto became prime minister, President Khan and the military were reluctant to tell her about Pakistan's nuclear program,Template:Sfn and it remains unknown how much Bhutto knew about the issue during her first term in office.Template:Sfn She later related that to find out more she contacted key scientists in the program, such as A. Q. Khan, herself, bypassing the president and military hierarchy.Template:Sfn On her trip to the United States, she told Congress that "we do not possess, nor do we intend to make, a nuclear device".Template:Sfnm While in Washington D.C., she met with CIA director William Webster, who showed her a mock-up of the Pakistani nuclear weapon and stated his opinion that research the project it had reached a crescendo in the final years of Zia's government.Template:Sfn William's revelations came as a shock to Bhutto, who was unaware of how advanced Pakistan's nuclear development had become.Template:Sfn The United States wanted to prevent Pakistan from creating such a device, and President George H. W. Bush informed her that U.S. military aid to the country would cease unless Pakistan refrained from producing nuclear bomb cores, the final step in creating the weapon.Template:Sfn Between January and March 1989, she authorised cold tests of nuclear weaponry, without fissionable material, although this did not satisfy the military authorities.Template:Sfn In 1990, shortly before leaving office, the American Ambassador Robert Oakley informed her that information obtained by U.S. satellites indicated that her commitment to not produce weapons-grade uranium had been breached at the Kahuta enrichment plant.Template:Sfn
Dismissal
The ISI organised Operation Midnight Jackal, through which they used bribery and intimidation to discourage National Assembly members from voting with the PPP.Template:Sfnm By 1990, the revelation of Midnight Jackal lessened President Khan's influence in national politics, government and the military.<ref name=20090828DailyTimes> {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In the 1980s, ethnic violence had broken out in Sindh province, with most of those killed being mohajirs.Template:Sfnm Late in 1989, the MQM—whose party represented mohajir interests—left Bhutto's coalition government.Template:Sfn The MQM then joined other voices in calling for a general strike to protest Bhutto's government.Template:Sfn In May 1990, she ordered the army to restore peace in Karachi and Hyderabad.Template:Sfn Within months of Bhutto's election, dissolution had set in among her liberal supporters.Template:Sfn Her narrow majority in the National Assembly had left her unable to reverse many of the Islamist reforms that Zia had introduced.Template:Sfn She did not repeal the Hudood Ordinances, which remained in law until 2006.Template:Sfn Her opposition to legalised abortion frustrated many Pakistani feminists.Template:Sfn Throughout her first term, Bhutto was criticised for being indecisive and unable to maintain control.Template:Sfn There had been anger that her husband had been allowed to attend cabinet meetings despite not being a member of the government.Template:Sfn He was also accused of receiving kickbacks and gained the nickname "Mr Ten Percent".Template:Sfnm The ISI had extensively spied upon Bhutto and her husband throughout her period in office,Template:Sfn President Khan privately paid plaintiffs to file corruption suits against Bhutto's husband.Template:Sfn While the investigations into his corruption were therefore politically motivated, there also was significant evidence of his guilt in this regard.Template:Sfn
In 1990, Bhutto gave birth to her first daughter, Bakhtawar.Template:Sfn
Tales of corruption in public-sector industries began to surface, which undermined the credibility of Bhutto. The unemployment and labour strikes began to take place which halted and jammed the economic wheel of the country, and Bhutto was unable to solve these issues due to the cold war with the President.<ref name=Lieven250>Template:Cite book</ref> In August 1990, Khan dismissed Bhutto's government under the Eighth Amendment of the constitution.Template:Sfnm He claimed that this was necessary owing to her government's corruption and inability to maintain law and order.Template:Sfn A caretaker government under the control of former PPP member Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi was sworn in, with Khan declaring a state of national emergency.Template:Sfn
Leader of the Opposition (1990–1993)
Khan called for new elections.Template:Sfn In the meantime, Bhutto and her husband were forbidden to leave Pakistan,Template:Sfn although they purchased an apartment in Queen's Gate, in the South Kensington area of London.Template:Sfn In October, Zardari was arrested on charges of extortion. According to the allegations, he had attached a remote-control bomb to the leg of a businessman and forced the latter to enter a bank and withdraw money. He was convicted and remained in prison for three years.Template:Sfnm
In the 1990 general election, the PPP only secured 45 of the 217 seats.Template:Sfn The IJI, under the leadership of Nawaz Sharif, won a majority in the Parliament, and Sharif became prime minister.Template:Sfnm Bhutto became the leader of the opposition.Template:Sfnm From this position she attacked Sharif's every policy, highlighting his government's failings in dealing with Pakistan's problems of poverty, unemployment, and lack of healthcare, although not also discussing her own administration's failures on those same issues.Template:Sfn To journalists she remained unrepentant about her period in office, insisting that she had made no mistakes.Template:Sfn She subsequently also accused Sharif of backing the Salafi jihadist militant group al-Qaeda, established by bin Laden.Template:Sfn Following the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, Bhutto visited India to attend his funeral.Template:Sfn
As dissatisfaction with Sharif's government grew, the PPP began to restore the support it had lost during Bhutto's premiership.Template:Sfn Encouraging public protests, in November 1992, she organised a 10-mile march from Rawalpindi to Islamabad in protest at the IJI government.Template:Sfn<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Sharif ordered her to be placed under house arrest to prevent her instigating any uprisings.Template:Sfn
Despite an economic recovery in late 1993, the IJI government faced public unease about the direction of the country and industrialisation that revolved around and centered only in Punjab Province. Amid protest and civil disorder in Sindh Province following the imposition of Operation Clean-up, the IDA government lost control of the province.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Peoples Party attacked the IDA government's record on unemployment and industrial racism.<ref name=oppurtunity>Template:Cite news</ref>
Sharif had attempted to reduce the president's powers.Template:Sfn Relations between Sharif and President Khan also soured and the prime minister came under pressure to resign from the armed forces.Template:Sfn With growing tensions between him and President Khan, in April 1993 the latter used the Eighth Amendment to dismiss Sharif as prime minister, citing corruption and misadministration.Template:Sfnm An agreement was reached whereby both Sharif and Khan would step down.Template:Sfn The military formed an interim government and called a general election for October 1993.Template:Sfn Their policies were very similar but a clash of personalities occurred, with both parties making many promises but not explaining how they were going to pay for them.<ref name=tumult>Template:Cite news</ref> Bhutto promised price supports for agriculture, pledged a partnership between government and business, and campaigned strongly for the female vote.<ref name=second> Template:Cite magazine</ref>
In February 1993, Bhutto gave birth to her daughter, Asifa.Template:Sfn That year, she also declared herself chair of the PPP for life.Template:Sfn This move reflected the lack of internal democracy within the party, which was increasingly referred to as the "Bhutto Family Party" (BFP).Template:Sfn During her campaign for the 1993 general election, the Salafi jihadist Ramzi Yousef unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate her twice. Yousef went on to play a role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in the U.S.Template:Sfn
Prime Minister (1993–1996)
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In the October 1993 general election, the PPP won the most seats,Template:Sfnm although it fell short of an outright majority, with 86 seats.Template:Sfn Sharif's new party, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), came second with 73 seats.Template:Sfn<ref name=Moore>Template:Cite news</ref> The PPP performed extremely well in Bhutto's native province, Sindh, and rural Punjab, while the PML-N was strongest in industrial Punjab and the largest cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi.<ref name=Gargan>Edward A. Gargan. "Bhutto Wins Plurality and Faces a New Struggle". The New York Times. 8 October 1993.</ref> Bhutto was again prime minister, but this time had a weaker parliamentary mandate than she had had in 1988.Template:Sfn She was officially sworn in on 19 October 1993.Template:Sfn
Realising the threat to her premiership posed by an unsympathetic president, Bhutto ensured that a PPP member, Farooq Leghari, was nominated and duly elected to the presidency in November.Template:Sfnm<ref name=Moore /> Zardari was freed from prison after Bhutto returned to office in 1993.Template:Sfn During her second term, Bhutto appointed both her husband and mother to her cabinet.Template:Sfnm The former was appointed investment minister, chief of the Intelligence Bureau, director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency, and chair of the new Environment Protection Council.Template:Sfn She gave him a monopoly on the country's gold imports, a post that earned him $10 million, which he deposited in an Indian bank.Template:Sfn Allen suggested that measures like these reflected how Bhutto had "given up on all her previous ideals and simply caved into the culture of corruption—indeed excelled in it, as she had excelled in so many other areas".Template:Sfn
John Burns, a journalist from The New York Times, investigated the business transactions of Bhutto and her husband, exposing the scale of their corruption.Template:Sfn By 1996, their takings through these various deals were estimated at $1.5 billion.Template:Sfn A subsequent inquiry by Pakistan's Accountability Bureau found that in that year, Bhutto, her husband, and her mother only declared assets totaling $1.2 million, leaving out the extensive foreign accounts and properties that they possessed.Template:Sfn Despite their significant earnings, the couple did not pay the amount of tax owed; between 1993 and 1994, Bhutto paid no income tax at all.Template:Sfn In 1996, Transparency International ranked Pakistan as the world's second most corrupt country.Template:Sfn
Bhutto ordered the construction of a new residence in Islamabad; it covered 110 acres of ground and cost $50 million to construct.Template:Sfn In 1993, Bhutto declared that her family burial ground would be converted into an official mausoleum and would undergo significant expansion.Template:Sfn She dropped the first architect she employed to do the job after deciding that she wanted a more Islamic design; she replaced him with Waqar Akbar Rizvi, instructing him to visit the tombs of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Ruhollah Khomeini for inspiration.Template:Sfn In 1995, Zardari purchased a fifteen-bedroom country house at Rockwood in Surrey, southern England; to hide evidence of ownership, he obtained the property through companies based in the Isle of Man.Template:Sfn She spent much of her second term abroad, making 24 foreign trips during its first twelve months.Template:Sfn
Domestic and foreign policy
Seeking to advance women's rights, in her second term Bhutto signed Pakistan to the international Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.Template:Sfn She was also a founding member of the Council of Women World Leaders, a group established in 1996.Template:Sfn Bhutto oversaw the creation of a women's division in the government, headed by a senior female civil servant, as well as a women's bank.Template:Sfn She opened a series of all-female police stations, staffed with female officers, to make women feel safer in coming forward to report crimes.Template:Sfnm She established family courts with female judges to deal with child custody and family issues,Template:Sfn and in 1994–95 the first women judges were appointed to the Supreme Courts of Peshawar and Sindh.Template:Sfn The fundamentalist Islamic laws introduced to restrict women's rights under Zia nevertheless remained in place;Template:Sfnm her failure to remove the hudood ordinances brought criticism from liberal circles and damaged her relations with women's and human rights groups.Template:Sfn
Bhutto stated that once back in the office, she asked for reasons why the Kahuta enrichment plant had broken her command by producing weapons-grade uranium and implemented a new system of security at the plant to provide greater oversight of the facility's scientists.Template:Sfn Both the military and ISI, however, supported the development of material that could produce viable nuclear weaponry.Template:Sfn India had developed the Agni missile a system which would allow the country to strike all of Pakistan's major cities, and as a counter, many in the Pakistani administration believed that they needed an equivalent launch pad system for their nuclear warheads.Template:Sfn They decided to make a deal with the North Korean government, exchanging information about enrichment for missile technology.Template:Sfn Bhutto later claimed that on her 1993 visit to North Korea, she secretly carried a computer CD containing nuclear data, although she subsequently retracted this claim.Template:Sfn Bhutto also made a state visit to the U.S. in 1995, where she convinced Congress to repeal sanctions that they had imposed on Pakistan over its nuclear weapons programme in 1990.Template:Sfn
In September 1996, the Taliban secured power in Afghanistan. Bhutto's government was one of only three countries to recognise it as the legitimate Afghan government, a move that further distanced it from its Western allies.Template:Sfnm The Taliban's rise coincided with a broader growth in opposition to Bhutto from Salafi Islamist groups.Template:Sfn Increasingly, there were Salafist protests against Bhutto in countries other than Pakistan.Template:Sfn During a trip to London, Bhutto faced Islamist protests outside the Dorchester Hotel, where she was staying. Speaking to UK Prime Minister John Major, she highlighted this protest as evidence for the growth of Salafi ideology in Britain, commenting that it would generate problems for Western countries in future.Template:Sfn
Bhutto was Prime Minister at a time of great racial tension in Pakistan.<ref name="19950601Dawn">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Ethnic violence had broken out in Sindh as muhajir—mobilised by the MQM—rioted in protest at what they saw as their poor treatment.Template:Sfn Abductions, bombings, and murders became increasingly common in Karachi.Template:Sfn To deal with the unrest, Bhutto permitted her interior minister, Naseerullah Babar, to launch Operation Blue Fox, a violent crackdown on the MQM.Template:Sfnm By the time that the Operation was officially completed, the government announced that 3,000 had been killed in Karachi, although the number may have been far larger.Template:Sfn An Amnesty International report commented that while Bhutto had declared that her government would end human rights abuses, the use of torture, rape, and extrajudicial killings remained common in Pakistani prisons.Template:Sfn
Sharif had been a proponent of laissez faire economics and his government had promoted privatisation.Template:Sfn During her second term, Bhutto also became increasingly open about her support for such an economic policy, pursuing broadly similar approaches to those of Sharif.Template:Sfn Her second term therefore witnessed a liberal approach to economics and the privatisation of industrial plants.Template:Sfn Pakistan saw a record $20 billion of foreign investment during this term, largely in the power industry.Template:Sfn The country also entered the list of the world's top ten developing capital markets.Template:Sfn There were far fewer public hopes regarding the second Bhutto premiership than there had been for the first.Template:Sfn The country's financial situation left no funds for her to pursue the desired social programs; 70% of national revenues went on paying off the national debt, while much of the other 30% went on the military, which would not tolerate cuts to its budget.Template:Sfn The 1990s had seen severe economic problems for Pakistan; the country's economic growth had declined to between 3 and 4%, poverty rose to 33%, and the percentage of households living in absolute poverty doubled.Template:Sfn With rapidly growing inflation and higher taxes, there was growing discontent over Pakistan's economic situation.Template:Sfn The announcement of the 1995 budget was met with strikes and demonstrations.Template:Sfn
Relations with Murtaza
As many PPP members became increasingly dissatisfied with Bhutto during the 1990s, they referred to her brother Mir Murtaza, still in exile, as Zulfikar's true heir.Template:Sfn From Syria, Murtaza campaigned as an independent candidate for Larkana in the Sindh Legislative Assembly election of 1993.Template:Sfnm Bhutto did not want him to join the PPP, fearing him as a potential challenger to her leadership of the party,Template:Sfn however his mother Nusrat campaigned for him, helping him win the election.Template:Sfnm Having won, he flew back to Pakistan in November to take up his new position.Template:Sfnm Around ninety criminal charges had been brought against him under Zia's regime, so on arrival, Murtaza was arrested and held for eight months in solitary confinement.Template:Sfnm Suvorova suggested that Bhutto had allowed this as a concession to those, including President Leghari and the Sindhi Chief Minister Syed Abdullah Ali Shah, who insisted that Murtaza face criminal proceedings for his militant activities.Template:Sfn Murtaza maintained that it was he, rather than his sister, who was the standard-bearer for their father's championing of the downtrodden.Template:Sfnm He espoused a socialist platform different from his sister's and called for internal elections within the PPP, which could have resulted in the removal of Bhutto.Template:Sfn Animosity grew between the two siblings.Template:Sfn
In June 1994, Murtaza was released on bail,Template:Sfn and at his subsequent trial he was acquitted of all charges.Template:Sfn In 1995, he established his own party, the PPP (Shaheed Bhutto);Template:Sfnm the party's name implied that he was closer to the Bhutto's family's Shaheed than his sister, whom he symbolically distanced from the family by referring to her as "Begum Zardari".Template:Sfn Murtaza focused much of his criticism on Bhutto's husband Zardari, whom he blamed of being responsible for government corruption.Template:Sfnm He hung a picture of Zardari up in the guest toilet of his house as an act of disrespect to his brother-in-law.Template:Sfn A rumour spread that in one incident, Murtaza invited Zardari to his house, only to have him pinned down by bodyguards and half his mustache forcibly shaved off.Template:Sfnm Nusrat continued to support Murtaza, damaging her relationship with Bhutto; mother and daughter increasingly criticised one another.Template:Sfnm Bhutto was so angry with her mother's actions that she ousted her as co-chair of the PPP.Template:Sfnm This angered Nusrat, who told The New York Times, "She's talked a lot about democracy, but she's become a little dictator."Template:Sfnm
On 20 September 1996, Murtaza was ambushed by police near Karachi; they opened fire, killing him and seven others.Template:Sfnm All witnesses were taken into police custody, where two of them died.Template:Sfn It was widely believed in Pakistan that the killing had been ordered by a senior government figure;Template:Sfn Murtaza's supporters thought that Bhutto and her husband were responsible.Template:Sfn When Bhutto tried to attend her brother's funeral in Larkana, local Murtaza supporters pelted her car with rocks.Template:Sfnm At the funeral, Nusrat—who had the early stages of Alzheimer's diseaseTemplate:Sfnm—also blamed Bhutto for her brother's death.Template:Sfn Bhutto initially blamed the killing on a conspiracy against her family;Template:Sfn she suggested that President Leghari had been involved, in an act designed to destabilise her government.Template:Sfnm She brought in Scotland Yard to investigate, partly to quell rumors that she had ordered the killing,Template:Sfn although the case remained unsolved.Template:Sfn After Murtaza's death, Bhutto re-established a relationship with her mother.Template:Sfn
Domestic affairs
Her approval poll rose by 38% after she appeared and said in a private television interview after the elections: "We are unhappy with the manner in which tampered electoral lists were provided in a majority of constituencies; our voters were turned away."<ref name=Gargan /> The Conservatives attracted voters from religious society (MMA) whose support had collapsed.<ref name=Gargan /> In confidential official documents Benazir Bhutto had objected to the number of Urdu speaking class in 1993 elections, in the context that she had no Urdu-speaking sentiment in her circle and discrimination was continued even in her government. Her stance on these issues was perceived as part of rising public disclosure which Altaf Hussain called "racism". Due to Benazir Bhutto's stubbornness and authoritative actions, her political rivals gave her the nickname "Iron Lady" of Pakistan. No response was issued by Bhutto, but she soon associated with the term.<ref name=19950601Dawn />
Benazir Bhutto expanded the authoritative rights of Police Combatant Force and the provisional governments that tackled the local opposition aggressively. Bhutto, through her Internal Security Minister Naseerullah Babar, intensified the internal security operations and steps, gradually putting down the opposition's political rallies, while she did not completely abandon the reconciliation policy. In her own worlds, Benazir Bhutto announced: "There was no basis for [strikes] ... in view of the ongoing political process".<ref name=LawAndOrder>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Economy
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Bhutto was an economist by profession; therefore during her terms as prime minister, she herself took charge of the Ministry of Finance. Bhutto sought to improve the country's declining economy. She disagreed with her father's nationalisation and socialist economics. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Benazir attempted to privatise major industries that had been nationalised in the 1970s.<ref name=Routledge>Template:Cite book</ref> Bhutto promised to end the nationalisation programme and to carry out the industrialisation programme by means other than state intervention; however, Bhutto did not carry out the denationalisation program or liberalisation of the economy during her first government. No nationalised units were privatised and few economic regulations were reviewed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
Pakistan suffered a currency crisis when the government failed to arrest the 30% fall in the value of the Pakistani Rupee from ₨. 21 to ₨.30 per U.S. dollar. Soon economic progress became her top priority but her investment and industrialisation programs faced major setbacks due to conceptions formed by investors based upon her People's Party nationalisation program in the 1970s. By the 1990s, Khan and Bhutto's government had also ultimately lost the currency war with the Indian Rupee which beat the value of Pakistan rupee for the first time in the 1970s. Bhutto's denationalisation program also suffered from many political setbacks, as many of her government members were either directly or indirectly involved with the government corruption in major government-owned industries, and her appointed government members allegedly sabotaged her efforts to privatise the industries.<ref name=Routledge />
Overall, the living standard for people in Pakistan declined as inflation and unemployment grew at an exponential rate particularly as UN sanctions began to take effect. During her first and second term, the difference between rich and poor visibly increased and the middle class in particular were the ones who bore the brunt of the economic inequality. According to a calculation completed by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, the standard of living for the rich improved while the standard of living for the poor declined.<ref name=Routledge/> Benazir attributed this economic inequality to be a result of ongoing and continuous illegal Bangladeshi immigration. Bhutto ordered a crackdown on and deportation of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Her action strained and created tensions in Bangladesh–Pakistan relations, as Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia refused to accept the deportees and reportedly sent two planeloads back to Pakistan. Religious parties also criticised Bhutto and dubbed the crackdown as anti-Islamic.<ref name=Pakistandirectorate>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
This operation backfired and had devastating effects on Pakistan's economy.<ref name=Pakistandirectorate /> President Khan saw this as a major economic failure despite Khan's permission granted to Bhutto for the approval of her economic policies. Khan blamed Bhutto for this extensive economic slowdown and her policy that failed to stop the illegal immigration. Khan attributed Bhutto's government members corruption in government-owned industries as the major sinkhole in Pakistan's economy that failed to compete with neighboring India's economy.<ref name=Routledge />
Privatisation and era of stagflation
During her second term, Bhutto continued to follow former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's privatisation policies, which she called a "disciplined macroeconomics policy". After the 1993 general elections, the privatisation programme of state-owned banks and utilities accelerated; more than ₨ 42 billion was raised from the sale of nationalised corporations and industries, and another US$20 billion from the foreign investment made the United States.<ref name=Dawn2>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> After 1993, the country's national economy again entered in the second period of the stagflation and more roughly began bite the country's financial resources and the financial capital.<ref name=SartajAziz>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Bhutto's second government found it extremely difficult to counter the second era of stagflation with Pressler amendment and the US financial and military embargo tightened its position.<ref name=SartajAziz /> After a year of study, Bhutto implemented and enforced the Eighth Plan to overcome the stagflation by creating a dependable and effective mechanism for accelerating economic and social progress. But, according to American ambassador to Pakistan, William Milam's bibliography, Bangladesh and Pakistan: Flirting with Failure in South Asia, the Eighth Plan (which reflected the planned economy of the Soviet Union) was doomed to meet with failure from the very beginning of 1994, as the policies were weak and incoherent.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
On many occasions, Bhutto resisted to privatise globally competitive and billion-dollar-worth state-owned enterprises (such as Pakistan Railways and Pakistan Steel Mills), instead the grip of nationalisation in those state-owned enterprises was tightened in order to secure the capital investment of these industries. The process of privatisation of the nationalised industries was associated with the marked performance and improvement, especially the terms of labour productivity.<ref name=Dawn2 /> A number of privatisation of industries such as gas, water supply and sanitation, and electricity general, were natural monopolies for which the privatisation involved little competition.<ref name=Dawn2 /> Furthermore, Benazir denied that privatisation of the Pakistan Railways would take place despite the calls made in Pakistan, and was said to have told Planning Commission chief Naveed Qamar, "Railways privatisation will be the 'black hole' of this government. Please never mention the railways to me again".Template:Citation needed Bhutto always resisted privatisation of United Bank Limited Pakistan (UBL), but its management sent the recommendation for the privatisation which dismayed the labour union. The United Group of Employees Management asked Bhutto for the issue of the regulation sheet which she denied. The holding of UBL in government control turned out to be a move that ended in "disaster" for Bhutto's government.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Foreign policy
Major-General Pervez Musharraf worked closely with Bhutto and her government in formulating an Israel strategy. In 1993 Bhutto ordered Musharraf, then Director-General of the Pakistani Army's Directorate-General for the Military Operation (DGMO), to join her state visit to the United States, unusual and unconventional participation. Bhutto and Musharraf chaired a secret meeting with Israeli officials who traveled to the US especially for the meeting. Under Bhutto's guidance Musharraf intensified the ISI's liaison with Israel's Mossad. A final meeting took place in 1995, which Musharraf also joined.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Bhutto also strengthened relations with its most important partner communist China, and repeatedly visited Beijing for mutual trade and international political co-operation the two countries.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1995, Benazir Bhutto made another state visit to the United States and held talks with U.S. president Bill Clinton. Bhutto urged him to revise the Pressler Amendment and launch a campaign against extremism. She criticised US nonproliferation policy and demanded that the United States honor its contractual obligation.Template:Clarify<ref name=Dawn1>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
During her second term, relations with Indian Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao further deteriorated. Like her father, Benazir Bhutto used rhetoric to oppose India and campaign in the international community against the Indian nuclear program. On 1 May 1995, she used harsh language in her public warning to India that "continuation of [Indian] nuclear program would have terrible consequences".<ref name="NTI"> {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> India responded to this saying she was interfering in an "internal matter" of India, and the Indian Army fired a RPG at the Kahuta, which further escalated events, leading to full-fledged war.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> When this news reached Bhutto, she responded by high-alerting the Air Force Strategic Command. It ordered heavily armed Arrows, Griffins, Black Panthers and the Black Spiders to begin air sorties and to patrol the Indo-Pakistan border on day-and-night regular missions. All of these squadrons are part of the Strategic Command. On 30 May, India test-fired a Prithvi-1 missile near the Pakistan border, which Bhutto condemned. She responded by deploying Shaheen-I missiles; however, they were not armed. Benazir Bhutto permitted the PAF to deploy the Crotale missile defence and the Anza-Mk-III near the Indian border, which escalated the conflict, but effectively kept the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force from launching any surprise attack.<ref name="19950601Dawn" />
In 1995, the ISI reported to Bhutto that Narasimha Rao had authorised nuclear tests and that they could be conducted at any minute.<ref name=19950601Dawn/> Benazir put the country's nuclear arsenal programme on high-alert<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> made emergency preparations, and ordered the Pakistani armed forces to remain on high-alert.<ref name=NTI /> However the United States intervened, Indian operations for conducting the nuclear tests were called off and the Japanese government attempted to mediate. In 1996, Benazir Bhutto met with Japanese officials and warned India about conducting nuclear tests. She revealed for the first time that Pakistan had achieved parity with India in its capacity to produce nuclear weapons and their delivery capability. She told the Indian press, that Pakistan "cannot afford to negate the parity we maintain with India". These statements represented a departure from Pakistan's previous policy of "nuclear ambivalence".<ref name=NTI /> Bhutto issued a statement on the tests and told the international press that she condemned the Indian nuclear tests. "If [India] conducts a nuclear test, it would force her [Pakistan] to ... follow suit", she said.<ref name=NTI />
Bhutto also ratcheted up her policy on Indian Kashmir, rallying against India.<ref name=19950905Dawn>Template:Cite news</ref> At an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting at the United Nations, Bhutto, who was accompanied by her Speaker Yousaf Raza Gillani upset and angered the Indian delegation, headed by prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, with vehement criticism of India.<ref name=19950905Dawn /> Vajpayee responded, saying: "It is Pakistan which is flouting the United Nations resolution by not withdrawing its forces from Kashmir ... You people create problems every time. You know the Kashmiri people themselves acceded to India. First, the Maharajah, then the Kashmiri parliament, both decided to go with India".<ref name=19950905Dawn />
Relations with military
During her second term, Benazir Bhutto's relations with the Pakistan Armed Forces took a different and pro-Bhutto approach, when she carefully appointed General Abdul Waheed Kakar as the Chief of Army Staff. General Abdul Waheed was an uptight, strict, and a professional officer with a view of Westernised democracy. Benazir also appointed Admiral Saeed Mohammad Khan as Chief of Naval Staff; General Abbas Khattak as Chief of Air Staff. Whilst, Air Chief Marshal Farooq Feroze Khan was appointed chairman Joint Chiefs who was the first (and to date only) Pakistani air officer to have reached to such 4 stars assignment. Benazir Bhutto enjoyed strong relations with the Pakistan Armed Forces, and president who was hand-picked by her did not question her authority. She hand-picked officers and promoted them based on their pro-democracy views while the President gave constitutional authorisation for their promotion. The senior military leadership including Jehangir Karamat, Musharraf, Kayani, Ali Kuli Khan, Farooq Feroze Khan, Abbas Khattak and Fasih Bokhari, had strong Western-democratic views and were generally close to Bhutto as they had resisted Nawaz Sharif's conservatism. Unlike Nawaz Sharif's second democratic term, Benazir worked with the military on many issues where the military disagreement, solving many problems relating directly to civil-military relations. Her tough and hardline policies on Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, which the military had backed Benazir Bhutto staunchly.<ref name=Mazhar>Template:Cite book</ref>
After the assassination was attempted, Benazir Bhutto's civilian security team headed under Rehman Malik, was disbanded by the Pakistan Army whose X-Corps' 111th Psychological Brigade— an army brigade tasked with countering the psychological warfare— took control of the security of Benazir Bhutto, that directly reported to Chief of Army Staff and the Prime Minister. Benazir Bhutto ordered General Abdul Waheed Kakar and the Lieutenant-General Javed Ashraf Qazi director-general of ISI, to start a sting and manhunt operation to hunt down the ringmaster, Ramzi Yousef. After few arrests and intensive manhunt search, the ISI finally captured Ramzi before he could flee the country. In a matter of weeks, Ramzi was secretly extradited to the United States, while the ISI managed to kill or apprehend all the culprits behind the plot. In 1995, she personally appointed General Naseem Rana as the Director-General of the ISI, who later commanded the Pakistan Army's assets in which came to known as "Pakistan's secret war in Afghanistan". During this course, General Rana directly reported to the prime minister and led the intelligence operations after which were approved by Benazir Bhutto. In 1995, Benazir also appointed Admiral Mansurul Haq as the Chief of Naval Staff, as the Admiral had personal contacts with the Benazir's family. However, it was the Admiral's large-scale corruption, sponsored by her husband Asif Zardari, that shrunk the credibility of Benazir Bhutto by the end of 1996 that led to the end of her government after all.<ref name=Mazhar />
Dismissal
Relations between Bhutto and Leghari had declined after she suggested he had been involved in her brother's murder. Leghari sought the backing of the Army Chief, Karamat, to move against her premiership.Template:Sfn Leghari warned Bhutto that he would dismiss her government unless she introduced measures to curtail corruption and deal with the economic crisis.Template:Sfn<ref name=nyarrest>Template:Cite news</ref> In response, she gave up her role as Minister of Finances and dismissed most of her economic advisers in October 1996.Template:Sfn<ref name=nyarrest/> She nevertheless maintained that the country's economic problems were the fault of Sharif's previous administration.Template:Sfn<ref name=nyarrest/> Citing the eighth amendment of the Constitution, on 5 November, Leghari dismissed Bhutto's government on the grounds of corruption and incompetence. He added the suspicion that Bhutto had been involved in her brother's death.Template:Sfnm<ref name=nyarrest/> Troops surrounded Bhutto's residence,<ref name=nyarrest/> while Zardari tried to leave the country for Dubai, but was arrested and imprisoned, charged with money laundering and involvement in Murtaza's murder. He remained in prison until 2004.Template:Sfnm<ref name=nyarrest/>
Leghari installed a civilian caretaker government led by Malik Meraj Khalid while announcing forthcoming elections for February 1997.<ref name=nyarrest/> Bhutto challenged the constitutionality of Leghari's decision, taking the issue to the Supreme Court, but they ruled in agreement with the president in January in a 6–1 ruling.Template:Sfn<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Supreme Court's decision also resulted in the removal of all pro-Bhutto elements from the military.Template:Sfn In the ensuing election, which took place in February 1997, Sharif was re-elected.Template:Sfnm The PPP had secured only 18 seats in the National Assembly.Template:Sfn Some Pakistani feminist groups had refused to back Bhutto's re-election because, despite her repeated promises, she had not removed the hudud ordinances that Zia's administration had introduced.Template:Sfn
Leader of the Opposition (1996–1999)
Newly re-elected, Sharif moved quickly to curtail the powers of the presidency and judiciary.Template:Sfn He removed the constitution's Eighth Amendment which had been used by successive presidents to oust both Bhutto and himself from office.Template:Sfn Sharif also launched judicial proceedings against Bhutto.Template:Sfn In 1998, India tested its first nuclear weapon; Bhutto responded with an editorial for the Los Angeles Times in which she argued that the international community should go further than imposing economic sanctions on India, but should launch a preemptive bomb strike on India's nuclear facilities.Template:Sfn She called on Sharif to retaliate with a series of Pakistani military tests.Template:Sfn After Sharif's government did so, Bhutto called for Pakistan to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and arrive at a bilateral agreement on nuclear proliferation with India.Template:Sfn Tensions between India and Pakistan resulted in the Kargil War of 1999; the conflict humiliated Pakistan both militarily and politically and left the country with a very poor international standing. Bhutto observed the conflict from abroad, describing it as "Pakistan's biggest blunder".Template:Sfnm
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In April 1999, the Ehtesab Bench of the Lahore High Court convicted Bhutto in absentia, giving her a five years prison sentence, an $8.6 million fine, and disqualifying her from public office.Template:Sfnm The Pakistani authorities unsuccessfully tried to secure her arrest and extradition through Interpol.Template:Sfn Bhutto claimed that this was politically motivated.Template:Sfn She was in London at the time of the judgment, and rather than returning to Pakistan she relocated to Dubai.Template:Sfnm She decided on Dubai because Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the President of the United Arab Emirates, had been a longstanding friend of her family.Template:Sfnm She brought her mother and three children to live there with her,Template:Sfnm settling into a villa in the Emirates Hills given to her by the Emirati government.Template:Sfn She claimed that were she to return to Pakistan then she would be imprisoned and then murdered.Template:Sfn
She remained in Dubai for eight years, for five of which her husband remained imprisoned in Pakistan.Template:Sfn She remained head of the PPP,Template:Sfn and spent much of her time in exile fighting the corruption charges that were being brought against her and her husband.Template:Sfn Two years later a retrial was ordered after it was ascertained that undue political bias was exerted on the judges.Template:Sfnm Bhutto also campaigned for Zardari's release from prison.Template:Sfn Some of her close political advisers suggested that she abandon him for the sake of her political career, but she refused.Template:Sfn While in Dubai, she also focused on raising her children and caring for her mother, whose Alzheimer's disease had progressed to a severe stage.Template:Sfn
In October 1999, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pervez Musharraf, launched a military coup which ousted Sharif from power.Template:Sfnm Bhutto called the coup "disturbing" and "distressing" but noted that it had got rid of Sharif, "an unpopular despot who was hounding the press, the judiciary, the opposition, the foreign investors." She called on Western countries to push for a return to electoral democracy in Pakistan.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Musharraf stated that both Sharif and Bhutto had "misgoverned the country" and had failed to allow internal democracy within their own parties, pointing to Bhutto's appointment as chair for life of the PPP, something he compared to "the old African dictators".Template:Sfn
In April 2000, Sharif was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment.Template:Sfn At the request of the Saudi monarch, Sharif was released from prison after a year and exiled to Saudi Arabia; he was also disqualified from holding public office.Template:Sfnm In 2002, Musharraf amended the constitution to ban anyone serving more than two terms as prime minister, thus disqualifying both Bhutto and Sharif, whom he called "useless politicians".Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Musharraf also consolidated power around himself; in June 2001 he appointed himself to the Presidency, holding this position alongside his positions as chief executive and chief of the army staff.Template:Sfn He talked about the need for a return to democracy and to respect human rights.Template:Sfn He was a secularist and repealed the Hudood Ordinances, an achievement Bhutto had been unable to make.Template:Sfnm In an April 2002 referendum, Musharraf extended his presidential mandate for a further five years.Template:Sfnm Bhutto expressed concern that with mainstream politicians removed from Pakistan's political arena, the vacuum would be filled by Islamist extremists.Template:Sfn
She was in Dubai while the PPP contested the October 2002 general election; it received the largest number of votes but only 63 seats in the National Assembly.Template:Sfn Musharraf agreed to release Zardari in November 2004 as a symbol of good will; following his release, Zardari travelled to New York for medical treatment.Template:Sfnm Bhutto flew to New York roughly every three weeks to visit him.Template:Sfn The couple did not officially acknowledge it, but their relationship was essentially over.Template:Sfn Figures in the PPP alleged that Musharraf held a longstanding animosity towards Bhutto and her family because, under her father, Musharraf's father had been sacked from his position, accused of involvement in a scam.Template:Sfn
Charges of corruption
In June 1997, the Pakistani government formally requested that the Swiss government review bank accounts owned by Bhutto and her husband.Template:Sfn In 1998, a Swiss magistrate, Daniel Devaud, seized a safe-deposit box containing a $190,000 necklace that Bhutto had purchased in London's Bond Street the previous year. Over the following six years, he investigated how Bhutto had obtained the money used to buy this item.Template:Sfn His investigations were followed by a BBC documentary team led by Owen Bennett-Jones.Template:Sfn Devaud's investigations revealed a range of corrupt deals that Zardari had been involved with. It was discovered that Dassault, a French aircraft manufacturer, had agreed to pay Zardari and another Pakistani man $200 million to ensure he would facilitate a $4 billion sales of fighter jets.Template:Sfn<ref name=jld1>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> It was also revealed that in both Bhutto and Zardari had taken approximately $15 million in exchange for awarding a customs contract to the Swiss firms SGS/Cotecna when she was prime minister.Template:Sfn Devaud concluded that Bhutto "knew she was acting in a criminally reprehensible manner by abusing her role in order to obtain for herself and for her husband considerable sums in the interest of her family at the cost of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan".Template:Sfn
Benazir Bhutto was embroiled in a number of cases being pursued by Nawaz Sharif's government in 1997. She termed those cases as a part of Sharif's plan to eliminate her from politics. In an effort to challenge Sharif government's "ehtesab drive", Ms Bhutto along with other PPP leaders visited the Ehtesab Commission, Islamabad, where she handed over corruption references against then PM Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shehbaz Sharif to Abdul Jaleel, Director Special Enquiries at the Ehtesab Commission. These references contained charges of corruptions against Sharif family and Saif-ur-Rehman who was a close aide of Nawaz Sharif. Ms Bhutto gave full statements of facts of complaints.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1998, Switzerland issued a request for the arrest of Bhutto on suspicion of money laundering.Template:Sfn The Geneva City Court subsequently charged Zardari in absentia with laundering money and taking bribes of $15 million from SGS and Cotecna.Template:Sfn A Swiss court ordered her to turn over $11.9 million to the Pakistani state and to serve 180 days in prison.Template:Sfn 17 Swiss bank accounts owned by the Zardari-Bhutto family were frozen by the country's government.Template:Sfn In 2004, a UK court ruled that Rockwood Estate in Surrey—which Zardari owned, despite his repeated denials—should be sold and the proceeds given to the Pakistani state, who were the rightful owners. Zardari protested, admitting that he owned the property and that he should receive the proceeds of its sale.Template:Sfnm
Through a spokesman, Bhutto said that the charges against her represented a witch hunt and compared them to McCarthyism.Template:Sfn She expressed bemusement as to why many thought her spending was lavish: "I mean, what is poor and what is rich? If you mean, am I rich by European standards, do I have a billion dollars, or even a hundred million dollars, even half that, no, I do not. But if you mean that I'm ordinary rich, yes, my father had three children studying at Harvard as undergraduates at the same time. But this wealth never meant anything to my brothers or me."Template:Sfn She maintained that the charges against her and her husband were purely political.<ref name=Husband>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Bhutto ignored the summons to travel to Switzerland to serve her sentence. She challenged the court ruling and secured a retrial which overturned the previous ruling.Template:Sfn However, Allen commented: "no one seriously suggested that the evidence had been fixed or that Bhutto and Zardari were not thieves on a grand scale."Template:Sfn
Bhutto was a client of Mossack Fonseca, whose customer records were disclosed in the Panama Papers leak. 7 September 2001 London law firm Richard Rooney and Co told MF-BVI (Mossack Fonseca British Virgin Islands) to create Petroline International Inc in the British Virgin Islands.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Petroline International Inc is owned by Bhutto, her nephew Hassan Ali Jaffery Bhutto, and her aide and head of security Rehman Malik, who later became a senator and Interior Minister in the government of Yousaf Raza Gillani. Mossack Fonseca had declined to do business with Bhutto's first company, similarly named Petrofine FZC, established in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2000. The Petrofine was "politically sensitive", they said, and "declined to accept Mrs. Bhutto as a client".<ref name=MFBhutto>Template:Cite news</ref> A United Nations committee chaired by former head of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, concluded in a 2005 investigation into abuses of the oil-for-food program that Petrofine FZC had paid US$2 million to the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein to obtain US$115–145 million in oil contracts.<ref name=Off>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2006, the Pakistani National Accountability Bureau (NAB) accused Bhutto, Malik and Ali Jaffery of owning Petrofine. Bhutto and the PPP denied this. In April 2006 an NAB court froze assets owned in Pakistan and elsewhere by Bhutto and Zardari. The $1.5 billion in assets were acquired through corrupt practices, the NAB said, and noting that the 1997 Swiss charges of criminal money-laundering were still in litigation.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At Pakistan's request, Interpol issued notices—but not arrest warrants—for Bhutto and her husband.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> On 27 January 2007, she was invited by the United States to speak to President George W. Bush and Congressional and State Department officials.<ref> {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Later life and death
Negotiating a return to Pakistan
The US and UK had supported Musharraf because of his role in assisting their War on Terror—especially the War in Afghanistan—but they gradually lost faith in his ability to rule successfully.Template:Sfnm His domestic popularity was slipping; a mid-2007 poll gave him only a 26% approval rating.Template:Sfn In 2007, mass anti-Musharraf protests broke out in what was known as the Lawyers' Movement.Template:Sfnm Pakistan was also experiencing growing levels of violence from Islamist militants, such as the Siege of Lal Masjid.Template:Sfnm Official figures held that eight suicide bombings took place in 2006 and 44 in 2007.Template:Sfn The US government increasingly saw Bhutto as an important figure who could help to constrain Pakistan's domestic problems.Template:Sfn They nevertheless wanted a power-sharing deal and did not want Musharraf removed from power completely, regarding him as a vital ally in their War on Terror.Template:Sfn
Assisted by Luis Ayala, the secretary-general of the Socialist International, in 2006 Bhutto and Sharif began a process of reconciliation.Template:Sfn Ayala believed that this was a prerequisite for ensuring Pakistan's transition back to democratic elections.Template:Sfn Both Bhutto and Sharif had residences in London, not far from one another. Facilitated by the lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, the pair developed a joint plan of action.Template:Sfn In May 2006 they both signed a Charter of Democracy, a document calling for an end to military rule.Template:Sfnm They established a committee consisting of four Pakistani senators, two from the PPP and two from the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).Template:Sfn Henceforth, Bhutto avoided openly criticising Sharif as she once had.Template:Sfn
Concerned about the instability of their ally, the US government pushed Musharraf to meet with Bhutto and come to an arrangement that might strengthen his legitimacy.Template:Sfn This was also encouraged by the UK government.Template:Sfn In January 2007, Musharraf held his first meeting with Bhutto at a hotel in Abu Dhabi, followed by further talks in June.Template:Sfnm As a result of their discussions, it was agreed that the Pakistani authorities would drop all charges of corruption against both Bhutto and her husband.Template:Sfnm This was achieved through the introduction of the National Reconciliation Ordinance, a measure which nullified all pending criminal proceedings against politicians.Template:Sfn The Ordinance also lifted Musharraf's ban on individuals serving more than two terms as prime minister.Template:Sfnm It was agreed that if Musharraf stepped down from his military positions and was elected as a civilian president, then Bhutto would be willing to serve under him as prime minister.Template:Sfnm Many of Musharraf's close allies had reservations about his concessions to Bhutto.Template:Sfn
The United States' Condoleezza Rice and the UK's Jack Straw worked together to ensure a transition back to electoral democracy in Pakistan.Template:Sfn The UK and Spain both dropped criminal investigations into Bhutto's corruption, although Switzerland refused to do so.Template:Sfn In August 2007, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalizad, had several meetings with Bhutto in New York City.Template:Sfnm There, Bhutto also gave a public talk at the Council of Foreign Relations.Template:Sfn Bhutto and Khalizad also traveled to a luncheon in Aspen, Colorado to meet with prominent U.S. political and business leaders.Template:Sfn In October 2007, Musharraf was elected president by Pakistan's parliament. In keeping with the agreement made by Bhutto and Musharraf, the PPP representatives abstained rather than voting against Musharraf's nomination.Template:Sfnm
The US publisher HarperCollins paid Bhutto half a million dollars to produce a book, to be titled Reconciliation.Template:Sfn Co-written with the U.S. political scientist and journalist Mark Siegel, it would be published in 2008 as Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West.Template:Sfn Reconciliation was partly a response to the Clash of Civilisations theory that had been popularised by the American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington during the 1990s.Template:Sfn She argued that Huntington's theory denied the universality of democratic ideals and created a "self-fulfilling prophecy of fear" whereby it provoked the conflicts that it claimed to predict.Template:Sfn In Reconciliation she proposed that Western countries finance a new "Marshall Plan" to aid the poor in Muslim-majority countries, believing that this would improve Islamic attitudes toward the West.Template:Sfn
Return to Pakistan
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Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007, arriving in Karachi.Template:Sfnm It was widely thought that she had a strong chance of becoming the country's next prime minister in the 2008 national elections,Template:Sfn although her deal with Musharraf and links with the U.S. had dented her popularity and Sharif—still in Saudi Arabia—was more popular in the opinion polls.Template:Sfn Musharraf was annoyed at her arrival, having requested that she return only after the election.Template:Sfn Her husband and daughters remained in Dubai, while her son was still studying at Oxford.Template:Sfn
Bhutto described the main problem facing her country as the clash between "moderation and extremism",Template:Sfn and was pessimistic about her safety.Template:Sfn Musharraf himself had survived several assassination attempts by Islamist militants,Template:Sfnm and warned Bhutto that she too would be a target.Template:Sfn She requested that the US or UK take responsibility for her security, but they refused, and her security detail was instead organised by Musharraf.Template:Sfn While her cavalcade was making its way through a crowd in Karachi, two bombs exploded, killing 149 and injuring 402. Bhutto herself was physically unharmed.Template:Sfnm Bhutto alleged that there were four suicide squads that had been dispatched to eliminate her and that there were key officials in the government involved in the plot; she sent a list naming these officials to Musharraf.Template:Sfnm<ref name=afterbombingNYT>Template:Cite news</ref> Bhutto requested that Musharraf bring in the British Scotland Yard or the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate the crime, but he refused.Template:Sfnm
Relations between the pair were further strained when Musharraf declared a state of emergency and suspended the constitution in November, at which point Bhutto was visiting Dubai.Template:Sfnm The PPP and PML-N launched protests at Musharraf's actions.Template:Sfn Against the warnings of some of her advisors, Bhutto quickly returned to Pakistan, where she was briefly placed under house arrest.Template:Sfnm She then publicly denounced Musharraf, fearing that any association with him would damage her credibility.Template:Sfn On 26 November, Sharif returned from exile; that same day, Bhutto filed papers to contest two parliamentary seats in the Larkana constituency.Template:Sfn As he had previously agreed with Bhutto, Musharraf then retired as army chief and was sworn in as Pakistan's civilian president.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In early December, Bhutto met with Sharif to publicise their demand that Musharraf fulfil his promise to lift the state of emergency before January's parliamentary elections, threatening to boycott the vote if he failed to comply.Template:Sfn<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On 16 December, Musharraf did so.Template:Sfnm Bhutto announced that the PPP would campaign on "the five E's": employment, education, energy, environment, and equality.Template:Sfn The PPP's manifesto called for greater civilian oversight of, and restrictions on, the military and intelligence agencies.Template:Sfn They also vowed to rid the intelligence services of elements driven by political or religious motives.Template:Sfn
Assassination
On the morning of 27 December 2007, Bhutto met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.Template:Sfnm In the afternoon, she gave a speech at a PPP rally held in Rawalpindi's Liaquat National Bagh.Template:Sfnm On leaving in a bulletproof vehicle, she opened the car's escape hatch and stood up to wave to the surrounding crowds.Template:Sfnm A man standing within two to three metres of the car fired three gunshots at her and detonated a suicide vest packed with ball bearings.Template:Sfn Bhutto was fatally injured; reports differ as to whether she was hit by bullets or by shrapnel from the explosion.Template:Sfnm Twenty-two others also died.Template:Sfn Bhutto was rushed to Rawalpindi General Hospital but was clinically dead on arrival and attempts at resuscitation were unsuccessful.Template:Sfnm No autopsy was conducted, and the body was swiftly transported to Chaklala Air Base.Template:Sfnm The following day, she was buried next to her father in the Bhutto family mausoleum, Garhi Khuda Bakhsh, her family graveyard near Larkana.Template:Sfnm Musharraf declared a three-day period of mourning,Template:Sfn while PPP supporters rioted in various parts of Pakistan, leading to at least 50 deaths.Template:Sfnm
Authorities claimed that the assassin had been a teenage boy from South Waziristan.Template:Sfn They claimed to have proof that the attack had been masterminded by Baitullah Mehsud, leader of the Pakistani Taliban.Template:Sfnm<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The United States Central Intelligence Agency concurred that this was probable,Template:Sfn although Mehsud denied the accusation.Template:Sfnm Mehsud nevertheless had a motive: he believed that Bhutto's pro-American and secularist agenda would undermine the Pakistani Taliban's control of South Waziristan and hinder the growth of Sunni Islamist radicalism.Template:Sfn Al-Qaeda commander Mustafa Abu al-Yazid claimed responsibility for the assassination,Template:Sfnm declaring that "We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahideen."Template:Sfn The PPP accused the government of a cover-up,Template:Sfn with several PPP figures claiming that Bhutto had been killed by a sniper linked to the intelligence agencies.Template:Sfn Within Pakistan, there was also public speculation that the attack might have been masterminded by India or the United States.Template:Sfn Musharraf agreed to invite Britain's Scotland Yard to investigate the assassination, although its eventual report proved inconclusive.Template:Sfnm Requests for the body to be exhumed for an autopsy were rejected by Zardari.Template:Sfnm
In Bhutto's political will, she had designated her son Bilawal, who was then 19, as her political heir as chair of the PPP. It also specified that her husband should serve as custodial chairman until Bilawal completed his formal education.Template:Sfn<ref name="cbsnews">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Zardari became co-chair of the PPP.Template:Sfnm The academic Anna Suvorova specified that Bhutto's assassination created "a real family cult", one which was "fuelled by various apocrypha, rituals, and relics".Template:Sfn In the wake of Bhutto's death, the election was postponed from January to February 2008, when it resulted in the formation of a coalition government bringing together the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).Template:Sfnm The new coalition put forth PPP member Yousuf Raza Gilani as prime minister.Template:Sfnm Musharraf, facing likely impeachment, resigned as president in August.Template:Sfnm He fled to London although, in February 2011, a Rawalpindi court issued a subpoena for him on the grounds that he had not acted on known threats to Bhutto and had provided insufficient security to protect her.Template:Sfn In September 2008, Zardari was elected President of Pakistan by the country's electoral college; he remained in that position until 2013.Template:Sfnm
As president, Zardari called for a United Nations investigation into his wife's assassination.Template:Sfn In 2009, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon established a three-person team to lead the investigation comprising the Chilean Heraldo Muñoz, Irish Peter FitzGerald, and Indonesian Marzuki Darusman.Template:Sfnm Although it was not in the commission's remit to identify a culprit,Template:Sfn Muñoz later expressed the view that the assassination was likely carried out by the Pakistani Taliban, perhaps with the support of Mehsud, and that they may well have been assisted by rogue elements in the country's intelligence agencies.Template:Sfn He also expressed the view that the original police investigation had been deliberately botched.Template:Sfnm In February 2012, the Pakistani official enquiry issued its final report, placing responsibility for the attack with 27 different militant groups.Template:Sfnm In May 2013, the state's main prosecutor in the Bhutto case, Zulfikar Ali, was himself assassinated in Islamabad.Template:Sfn There was never a smoking gun in the Bhutto investigation.Template:Sfn Many in Pakistan had reasons for wanting Bhutto dead;Template:Sfn some saw her as corrupt, and her killing was considered advantageous to both the military establishment and to the Islamic fundamentalists who despised her.Template:Sfn
Ideology
Bhutto was committed to democracy and modernisation,Template:Sfn and believed that the future of the Islamic world lay in the embrace of these processes.Template:Sfn However, Allen thought that it was "hard to pin down" what Bhutto's "core political values" actually were.Template:Sfn Bhatia described Bhutto as having "liberal convictions" and a "self-evidently progressive outlook",Template:Sfn while Suvorova thought that Bhutto presented herself as "the outpost of universal liberal values in conservative Pakistan" for a Western audience.Template:Sfn Bhutto biographer G. S. Bhargava thought that in the context of Pakistani politics, she could "pass" for a social democrat.Template:Sfn Her friend Catherine Drucker, who knew her while the two women were at Oxford University, said Bhutto's political views were then akin to those "commonplace" within the "mild leftism of the day".Template:Sfn Bhargava added that, through her education in governance and politics at Harvard and then Oxford, Bhutto had "a thorough exposure to political theory and practice, in historical perspective as well as in the contemporary setting".Template:Sfn
Bhutto admired the Thatcherite economic policies pursued by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom;Template:Sfn she was, according to biographer Mushtaq Ahmed, a "zealous convert" to privatisation and market economics.Template:Sfn Bhutto advocated the creation of an expanded economically and politically stable middle class in Pakistan, believing that this was needed in order to sustain a stable democratic state.Template:Sfn Allen commented that although the PPP had once been officially socialist in ideology, Bhutto "was not a natural socialist, or even as adept at talking the talk as Zulfikar had been".Template:Sfn She disagreed with her father's socialist economic policies, and when in power sought to privatise various industries that had been nationalised in the 1970s.Template:Sfn Ahmed thus suggested that while under Bhutto the PPP continued to profess ideals of egalitarianism and claimed it would enhance the welfare of peasants and workers, such "progressive phraseology" couched an absence of economic policies to benefit the poor.Template:Sfn Instead, Ahmed thought, its policies primarily benefited "the privileged classes" and was thus a right-wing rather than left-wing party.Template:Sfn
During her years in office, Bhutto also did nothing to seriously challenge the feudal nature of rural Pakistan.Template:Sfnm Under Bhutto, Ahmed wrote, people from the wealthy feudal class dominated the PPP "both at the federal and provincial levels".Template:Sfn Bhargava suggested that, because of the period in which she was operating, Bhutto did not need to engage in the "verbal radicalism" employed by her father, not needing to "clamor for a socialist identity" in order to win votes and allowing her to be "a pragmatist in both word and deed".Template:Sfn Lamb described Bhutto at being skilled in using populist strategies in election campaigns.Template:Sfn In a 2007 article for the Los Angeles Times, Bhutto's niece, Fatima Bhutto, called her "a puppet 'democratTemplate:'" linked to the U.S. government's neoconservative agenda.Template:Sfn
Under Bhutto's leadership, the PPP was officially secular,Template:Sfn as were the governments which she led.Template:Sfn However, in Pakistan at the time, the term "secularisation" was often understood not as reflecting the separation of religious institutions and the state, but rather had connotations of atheism and irreligion.Template:Sfn Thus, Suvorova argued, Bhutto opposed the secularisation of Islamic societies.Template:Sfn Bhutto also took a hard stance against militant Islamism.Template:Sfn Although she had to compromise with Pakistan's powerful Islamist lobby, she favored a secular government for the country.Template:Sfn Allen wrote that "at no time in her years in power did Bhutto, Westernised though she was, feel comfortable in seriously challenging Pakistan's Islamists."Template:Sfn Although during her campaigns she vowed to abolish the hudud restrictions on women that Zia had introduced, she never did so;Template:Sfn instead these were revoked by Musharraf in 2006.Template:Sfn
Bhutto was indignant when faced with sexism,Template:Sfn and regarded herself as an ardent supporter of women's rights;Template:Sfn however, Suvorova stated that she was "never a feminist in theory or practice".Template:Sfn Bhutto expressed the view that there were differences between male and female leaders, and that "women leaders are more generous and forgiving, male leaders tend to be more inflexible and more rigid."Template:Sfn In contrast to those Islamic clerics who insisted that her involvement in politics contrasted with Islamic values, she insisted that there was no conflict. In her view, "it was men's interpretation of our religion that restricted women's opportunities, not our religion itself. Islam in fact had been quite progressive towards women from its inception."Template:Sfn Bhutto described her main role model as Fatimah, the daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, stating that she admired her piety, wisdom, and courage.Template:Sfn She also described the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi as a political inspiration.Template:Sfn
Personal life
Personality
According to Bhutto biographer Shyam Bhatia, Bhutto possessed a desire to be liked and to be popular, and for this reason "was prepared to be all things to all people", having a "chameleon-like" quality to blend into her environment.Template:Sfn Muñoz concurred, describing Bhutto as "a woman of contradictions".Template:Sfn Suvorova similarly observed that Bhutto presented herself differently when in the West compared to when she was in Pakistan.Template:Sfn While in Pakistan Bhutto presented herself as a conservative Muslim who always wore her head covered, but as a student in Oxford she had adopted a more liberal lifestyle, tending to wear a T-shirt and jeans and occasionally drinking wine.Template:Sfn As a politician, she was conscious of how her image was presented in Pakistan; she dressed modestly, was never photographed with a glass lest it is interpreted as containing alcohol, and would refuse to shake men's hands.Template:Sfn In the country, she also wore a white dupatta on her head to placate Islamist opposition; her mother and other female family members had not covered their hair in this manner.Template:Sfnm
The journalist Christina Lamb believed that in being raised in a wealthy and aristocratic family, Bhutto was unable to appreciate the struggles of Pakistan's poorest.Template:Sfn The Islamic studies scholar Akbar S. Ahmed, who went to school with Bhutto, wrote that she was a "pampered and precocious" child.Template:Sfn Bhatia claimed that at Oxford, where he first met her, Bhutto was spoilt, self-obsessed, and prone to throwing temper tantrums, although at the same time was humorous and generous, willing to pay for her friends' meals whenever at a restaurant.Template:Sfn Allen suggested that Bhutto retained her "characteristic de haut en bas arrogance, a relic of her feudal upbringing",Template:Sfn arguing that her key character flaw had been "a belief in the special, almost sacred destiny of herself and the Bhutto family" and that accordingly, while she "spoke like a democrat ... she thought and felt as a dynast".Template:Sfn In later life, Bhutto was accused of being addicted to power, although Allen thought it more accurate to state that she was "addicted to adulation",Template:Sfn suggesting that this stemmed from a narcissistic element to Bhutto's personality.Template:Sfn
Template:Quote box Commentators and biographers have said that Bhutto shared her father's charismaTemplate:Sfnm but also his arrogance,Template:Sfn and that like him she was impatient with criticism.Template:Sfn The connection between Bhutto and her father was endorsed by Allen, who stated that they "had much in common: strength, charisma, political instinct, and the courage, part, and parcel of their arrogance, that was so characteristic of both".Template:Sfn Allen also believed that Bhutto was so dedicated to her father that "psychologically", she was "unable to admit to any imperfection" in him.Template:Sfn After his death she repeatedly presented his execution as a martyrdom.Template:Sfn Bhutto imitated many of her father's mannerisms and his style of speech;Template:Sfn the journalist Carla Hall referred to her having a "vaguely British accent".Template:Sfn She was an accomplished orator, having honed her skill at public speaking while president of the Oxford Debating Society.Template:Sfn
Having encountered her later in life, Muñoz regarded Bhutto as a "charming and intelligent" woman.Template:Sfn Close friends called her "BB",Template:Sfn a name with which she signed some of her personal letters.Template:Sfn Her parents gave her the childhood nickname of "Pinkie",Template:Sfnm possibly alluding to her rosy complexion.Template:Sfn
Allen described Bhutto as "a woman of action rather than an intellectual".Template:Sfn Bhutto's choice of reading material was usually either utilitarian or pleasurable rather than intellectual; she enjoyed reading Mills & Boon romance novels and the celebrity-focused Hello! magazine.Template:Sfn She read a number of self-help books, telling a friend that "for all the lows in my life, those self-help books helped me survive, I can tell you".Template:Sfn Her father had also encouraged her to read the writings of various prominent political figures, among them Napoleon Bonaparte, Otto von Bismarck, Vladimir Lenin, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and Mao Zedong.Template:Sfn She had a love of French and Italian cuisine,Template:Sfn and was a great fan of the music of American singer Neil Diamond.Template:Sfn
In a 2002 interview with The Guardian, Bhutto described her allegiance to the Sufi branch of Sunni Islam.Template:Sfn Allen thought her to have "some genuine, if unorthodox, religious belief, mixed up with superstition".Template:Sfn Bhargava stated that Bhutto was "dedicated and devout in her religious principles but modern and emancipated in her behavior and outlook".Template:Sfn In conversation, she often used the phrase "inshallah", and insisted that the Quran supported the equality of the sexes.Template:Sfn Bhutto was anti-abortion and spoke forcefully against abortion, most notably at the 1994 meeting of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, where she accused the West of "seeking to impose adultery, abortion, intercourse education and other such matters on individuals, societies, and religions which have their own social ethos".Template:Sfn<ref>Turner, Brian S. (2003) Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology (p. 118) Routledge</ref>
Family
Bhutto was the oldest of four children.Template:Sfn Of these, her younger sister Sanam, or "Sunny", remained close to her throughout her life.Template:Sfn
On returning to Pakistan in 1988, Bhutto's mother arranged for her marriage to the businessman Asif Ali Zardari.Template:Sfn Many of her friends were surprised that Bhutto acquiesced to Islamic tradition given her liberal attitudes, however, she later related that she "felt obligations to my family and my religion" to go through with it and that her high public profile made it difficult for her to find a husband through other means.Template:Sfn She consistently presented an image of respect and loyalty for her husband, throughout the many accusations and periods of imprisonment he faced.Template:Sfnm Allen commented that it would probably never be known how happy the couple's marriage was, for Bhutto "always projected support and loyalty for her unpopular mate".Template:Sfn
In the final years of Bhutto's life, she and her husband lived apart. According to Allen, she would have been aware that a divorce or a public separation would have resulted in the end of her political career in Pakistan due to social stigma around the subject.Template:Sfn In a 2007 interview, Bhutto said that she and her husband were living apart because of his medical requirements, adding that she visited him every month in New York.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Regarding the rumors of separation, in 2008 Bhutto's friend Victoria Schofield said that the marriage should not be judged by ordinary standards. According to Schofield, after Zardari's return from prison, the Bhuttos' marriage was going through a process of "readjustment".<ref>Template:Cite podcast</ref> In 2018, Bhutto's friend Ron Suskind described the marriage as "probably not all bad", although added that Bhutto did not consider her husband to be an equal partner in the marriage.<ref>Template:Cite podcast</ref>
The couple had three children: a son, Bilawal, was born on 21 September 1988, while she was campaigning for that year's election.Template:Sfnm She also had two daughters, Bakhtawar Bhutto (born 25 January 1990) and Aseefa (born 3 February 1993). When she gave birth to Bakhtawar, she became the first elected head of government to give birth while in office.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Bhutto was devoted to her father and husband.Template:Sfn In later life, she increasingly came to see success through the prism of her family.Template:Sfn
Public image and legacy
Muñoz described Bhutto as "one of Pakistan's most important political figures, a respected world leader, and the leading stateswoman in the Islamic world".Template:Sfn Allen suggested that although Bhutto's record in office was that of a "corrupt, compromised politician", she displayed admirable qualities, especially valor in the face of opposition.Template:Sfn Within the Islamic world, Bhutto was often regarded as "a genuine Muslim political leader" and recognised as the head of Pakistan's most popular political party.Template:Sfn Bhargava expressed the view that at the time of her initial election, Bhutto's "personal popularity" was "tremendous", larger than any that her father had previously achieved,Template:Sfn with Suvorova suggesting that at this point in her life Bhutto was often regarded as a "quasi-saint" by her supporters.Template:Sfn In 1996, the Guinness Book of Records named her the most popular international politician of the year,Template:Sfn and she also received such awards at the French Legion of Honour and Oxford University's Doctor Honours Causa.Template:Sfn
At the same time there were many Pakistanis who despised her, disliking her popularity, her ties to Western nations, and her modernising agenda.Template:Sfn Extremist Sunni Islamist elements opposed her because of their belief that female leaders are un-Islamic, and because she was a Shia Muslim.Template:Sfn They maintained that her participation in politics meant associating with men to whom she was not related and that this compromised the modesty required by Islam.Template:Sfn Conservative clerical opponents also claimed that by being prime minister, Bhutto was failing her religious duty, which was to focus her energies on having as many children as possible.Template:Sfn
Ahmed stated that Bhutto was one of the very few political leaders who had been able to "assume the iconic status of a political martyr in the West while simultaneously evoking strong sentiments in the Muslim world".Template:Sfn He therefore contrasted her with contemporaries like Iraq's Saddam Hussein who were popular domestically but hated in the West, and those like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak who curried favor with Western governments while alienating their domestic audience.Template:Sfn Bhutto gained popularity in Western nations in part because she could present herself as being "part of their world", speaking a high standard of English and having been educated at Harvard and Oxford.Template:Sfn While her Western supporters sometimes had doubts about her ability to govern, they generally viewed her as a progressive figure who could advance democracy and counter-terrorism in Pakistan.Template:Sfn
Allen commented that "the cards might have been stacked in Bhutto's favor—she was rich, educated, aristocratic, the favored daughter of a very powerful father—nevertheless, her achievement was a remarkable one" given the male-dominated environment of late-20th century Pakistani society.Template:Sfn Mushtaq Ahmed similarly believed that "for a woman to win an election in a male-dominated society was an achievement",Template:Sfn and that "her victory over the forces of reaction and persecution was an unprecedented accomplishment in political history."Template:Sfn Ahmed thought that the election of a female prime minister in a Muslim-majority country served as "a proclamation that Islam was a forward-thinking religion".Template:Sfn He added that as a pioneering female leader, Bhutto had "barely half a dozen" parallels, among them Indira Gandhi, Thatcher, Golda Meir, Chandrika Kumaratunga, and Corazon Aquino.Template:Sfn Comparisons with Aquino were often made — and welcomed by Bhutto — because both women had fought against a military dictatorship and spent time in exile.Template:Sfnm She became a global icon for women's rights,Template:Sfn and inspired many Pakistani girls and women by her example.Template:Sfn The Pakistani women's rights activist Malala Yousafzai—who received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize—cited Bhutto as a personal inspiration.Template:Sfn<ref name="Reporter">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="tribune.com.pk">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Writing in The American Prospect magazine, the journalist Adele M. Stan called Bhutto "An Imperfect Feminist", commenting that despite her efforts towards women's rights, these were sometimes offset by her compromises with Pakistan's Islamists and her support of the Taliban's rise to power in neighbouring Afghanistan.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Assessing her legacy, William Dalrymple wrote in The Guardian that "it's wrong for the West simply to mourn Benazir Bhutto as a martyred democrat since her legacy was far murkier and more complex".<ref name=Guardian>Template:Cite news</ref> Despite her western and positive image in the world, Bhutto's controversial policies and support have made her legacy much more complicated.<ref name=MixedLegacy /> Benazir Bhutto failed to revert the controversial Hudood Ordinance – a contentious presidential ordinance which suppressed women's rights, making them subordinate to men.<ref name=Guardian /> In 2009, CBS News described her legacy as "mixed", and commented that: "it's only in death that she will become an icon—in some ways, people will look at her accomplishments through rose-tinted glasses rather than remembering the corruption charges, her lack of achievements or how much she was manipulated by other people."<ref name=MixedLegacy>Template:Cite news</ref> Jason Burke, writing in The Guardian about Benazir, termed her "[both] a victim, as well as in part a culprit, of its [Pakistan's] chronic instability".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Several universities and public buildings in Pakistan have been named after her. The Pakistani government honored Bhutto on her birthday by renaming Islamabad's airport Benazir Bhutto International Airport, Muree Road of Rawalpindi as Benazir Bhutto Road<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Rawalpindi General Hospital as Benazir Bhutto Hospital.Template:Sfn Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani, a member of Bhutto's PPP, asked Musharraf to pardon convicts on death row on her birthday in honour of Bhutto.<ref name=RX>Template:Cite news</ref> Several months after Bhutto's death, a series of Pakistani postage stamps were announced to mark her 55th birthday.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Authored books
References
Explanatory notes
Footnotes
Bibliography
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Further reading
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