Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto 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 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 from the early 1980s until her assassination in 2007.
Of mixed Sindhi, Persian, and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, wealthy aristocratic family. She studied at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, where she was President of the Oxford Union. Her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar Bhutto, was elected prime minister on a socialist platform in 1973. She returned to Pakistan in 1977, shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, took control of the PPP and led the country's Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military government and self-exiled to Great Britain in 1984.
Of mixed Sindhi, Persian, and Kurdish parentage, Bhutto was born in Karachi to a politically important, wealthy aristocratic family. She studied at Harvard University and the University of Oxford, where she was President of the Oxford Union. Her father, the PPP leader Zulfikar Bhutto, was elected prime minister on a socialist platform in 1973. She returned to Pakistan in 1977, shortly before her father was ousted in a military coup and executed. Bhutto and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto, took control of the PPP and led the country's Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. Bhutto was repeatedly imprisoned by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq's military government and self-exiled to Great Britain in 1984.
