Smash hit

In 1996 the Army once again arranged her dismissal, clearing the way for another chaotic period of misgovernment by Nawaz Sharif. This endured until the military seized direct power once more in 1999, with Pervez Musharraf, the chief of staff of the Army, effecting a bloodless military coup.

Benazir faced imprisonment on a range of charges, including corruption, but she was allowed to go into exile, which she spent mostly in London, while an exiled Nawaz Sharif occupied a borrowed palace in Saudi Arabia. The two old enemies passed many years plotting to see who could be first to return to power when military rule ended. Even in exile Bhutto maintained a wary contact with Musharraf, in which power-sharing came under discussion.

With the stock of Musharraf falling lower within Pakistan in the opening years of the new millennium, with his uneasy alliance with the US as its principal partner in the “war on terror” coming under constant attack, both verbal and physical from Muslim clerical leaders and their followers, and with a groundswell of demand in the Western countries that supported him that he submit his presidency to ratification by a popular vote, the return of Bhutto to Pakistan, to play some sort of role in the political process, suddenly began to be spoken of again as a possibility.

On October 5 this year Musharraf signed a national reconciliation ordinance which gave amnesty to Bhutto and other opposition political leaders — though significantly not, at first, to Sharif. All corruption charges against her were dropped. The following day Musharraf won a parliamentary election which legitimised his tenure of the presidency. On October 18, Bhutto returned in triumph to Pakistan, assuming on-the-spot leadership of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).

Two suicide bombs exploded shortly after she arrived at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi. She was unharmed, but among the 136 killed in the blasts were 50 security guards of the PPP who had formed a human chain around the truck that was carrying her away from the airport. It was a portent of things to come, and an indication that the old enmities that had twice forced her from power were never far from the surface in Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto was born in Karachi in 1953, the eldest daughter of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani of Sindhi extraction, and his wife Begum Nusrat Bhutto, who was of Iranian-Kurdish extraction.

The Bhutto family was not a happy one. Benazir’s mother openly supported one of her sons as the rightful heir of the political dynasty before he was killed in a shoot-out in Karachi, saying that as a man it was his right to take over the party.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto adored his daughter but never hid his contempt for both his sons. His ancestors had grown rich by helping the British to rule Sind province (now Sindh), for which they were handsomely rewarded.

Although presenting himself as a man of the people he never gave up the family’s huge feudal landholdings. Neither did his daughter. It was often said of her that her political life was driven by a need to vindicate her father, a foul-tempered man who made enemies easily. She was to fail, just as she failed to fulfil the dreams of the millions who had believed passionately in her and in her father.

She was educated in Karachi at Lady Jennings Nursery School and the Convent of Jesus and Mary. She then had two years at Rawalpindi Presentation Convent before going to the Jesus and Mary Convent in Murree, where she took her O levels at the age of 15. She then went to Karachi Grammar School where she took her A levels.

She continued her studies in the US, from 1969 to 1973 at Radcliffe College. From there she went to Harvard, where she took a good BA in comparative government and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. From the US she came to Britain to read philosophy, politics and economics at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, while also doing a course in international law and diplomacy. In 1976 she became the first Asian woman to be elected President of the Oxford Union.

After completing her education she returned to Pakistan. Her father, who had been deposed, was in jail, and she was placed under house arrest. She was to be intermittently with him during his last days.