"They don't want democracy. They don't want me back. And they don't believe in women governing nations. So they will plot against me." Benazir Bhutto, Sept. 26, 2007
A gun attack and suicide bomb in Islamabad, Pakistan, killed the country's courageous opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf declared three days of mourning in honor of Bhutto, reports CNN. Get more details on the assassination.
Bhutto, a former two-time prime minister of Pakistan, was 54. She is survived by her three children and her husband.
Bhutto was the eldest of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's four children. She was educated at Harvard and Oxford universities and became a political leader in Pakistan relatively early in life as she campaigned for her imprisoned father in 1977 before his untimely death.
Bhutto was not a stranger to tragedy. Her father was executed in 1979 by hanging and her brother was assassinated. Following her father's death, Bhutto, then 26, became the leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a socialist political party that her father formed in 1968.
In September, Bhutto told CNN that her father's death was tough to deal with but she was heartened by what she had learned from him--"that someone has to stand up for the principles that they believe in. I'm standing up for the principles of democracy," she told CNN.
She endured frequent house arrests during the ruling military dictatorship of Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq and a two-year exile from 1984 to 1986. Throughout those two years, Zia-ul-Haq had instituted martial law. Bhutto returned to Pakistan after Zia-ul-Haq lifted martial law and she soon became the military dictator's most formidable political opponent, according to The Encyclopedia Britannica.
Zia-ul-Haq's death in 1988 left a power vacuum in Pakistan. Bhutto's PPP took advantage and won the single largest bloc of seats in Pakistan's national assembly. Bhutto became Pakistan's prime minister and the first woman to lead a Muslim country in modern history that same year, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Bhutto, however, struggled to rid Pakistan of widespread poverty, increasing crime and governmental corruption. As a result, Pakistan's president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, convicted and dismissed her and her coalition government. He claimed she was corrupt and called for new elections. In 1990, the PPP lost the national elections and Bhutto led the parliamentary opposition to her successor.
Bhutto and the PPP remained resilient. In October 1993, the PPP won a plurality of the vote and Bhutto led the coalition government as prime minister. But again her government faced allegations of corruption, mismanagement and that it failed to diminish crime. Pakistan's president at the time, Farooq Leghari, dismissed Bhutto and her government in 1996, says Encyclopedia Britannica. In 1999, Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who had been jailed since 1996, were both convicted of corruption. Bhutto left the country for a self-imposed exile that lasted eight years. Meanwhile, Pakistan's current president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, seized power with a military coup in 1999. Musharraf could have dismissed the charges Bhutto faced and released her husband from jail, but he refused. However, after it was revealed that the government interfered in her case, the decision was overturned by Pakistan's supreme court in 2001.
Bhutto remained in exile while her husband was in jail, living in London and Dubai until 2007. In 2004, her husband was released from prison on bail. He joined Bhutto in exile for a few years until just before the 2007 elections. Then Musharraf granted Bhutto and her husband amnesty for the corruption charges, and in October 2007, Bhutto returned to Pakistan, ending her eight-year exile.
Bhutto talked about her return to Pakistan during her Sept. 26 CNN interview. She criticized Musharraf's military dictatorship for creating a country that emboldens terrorist groups. She also noted those groups wanted her dead.
"They don't want democracy. They don't want me back. And they don't believe in women governing nations. So they will plot against me," said Bhutto to CNN.
Bhutto added: "I know the past has been tragic but I'm an optimist by nature. I put my faith in the people of Pakistan. I put my faith in God. I feel that what I'm doing is for a good cause, a right cause--to save Pakistan from extremist militants."
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