Benazir Bhutto [ a ] 21 June โ 27 December was a Pakistani politician and stateswoman who served as the 11th prime minister of Pakistan from to , and again from to She was also the first woman elected to head a democratic government in a Muslim-majority country. A liberal and a secularist ideologically, she chaired or co-chaired the Pakistan People's Party PPP from the early s until her assassination in Of mixed Sindhi , Persian , and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, wealthy aristocratic family.
Her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar Bhutto , was elected prime minister on a socialist platform in She returned to Pakistan in , shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq 's military government and self-exiled to Great Britain in She returned in andโinfluenced by Thatcherite economicsโtransformed the PPP's platform from a socialist to a liberal one, before leading it to victory in the election.
As prime minister, her attempts at reform were stifled by conservative and Islamist forces within Pakistan, including President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and the Pakistani military. Her administration, having been accused of corruption and nepotism , was dismissed by Khan in Intelligence services rigged that year's election to ensure a victory for the conservative Islamic Democratic Alliance IJI , at which point Bhutto became the Leader of the Opposition.
In her second term, she oversaw economic privatisation and attempts to advance women's rights. The PPP lost the election , and in she went into self-exile once more, living between Dubai and London for the next decade. A widening corruption inquiry culminated in a conviction in a Swiss court. Following the United Statesโbrokered negotiations with then Pakistani president, general Pervez Musharraf , she returned to Pakistan in to run in the 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 The Salafi jihadist militant group al-Qaeda claimed responsibility, although the involvement of the Pakistani Taliban and rogue elements of the intelligence services were also widely suspected. She was buried at her family mausoleum in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.
