Benazir Bhutto, a pioneer for Pakistan's democracy came from a prominent political family. She was the eldest child of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Mr. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and former First Lady of Pakistan Mrs. Nusrat Bhutto, and was the wife of current President of Pakistan Mr. Asif Ali Zardari. She was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state and was twice the Prime Minister of Pakistan. She was Pakistan's first and to date only female prime minister.

After completing her study, Benazir returned to Pakistan in 1977 from England when her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was elected as the Prime Minister. However, it was not a great welcome; days after her arrival, the military seized power and her father was imprisoned. In 1979 he was hanged by the military government of General Zia Ul Haq.

And over the following years, she herself was arrested many times and repeatedly put under house arrest. During the summer of 1981, she was put under solitary confinement in a desert cell in Sindhi province. After six years of house arrests and imprisonment, she was given permission to leave the country in 1984 on medical grounds.

She settled in London but continued to raise her voice against human rights violations by the regime. Along with her two brothers, she founded an underground organisation to resist the military dictatorship. When her brother died in 1985, she came back to Pakistan for his burial, only to be arrested for participating in anti-government rallies. After her release, Benazir soon returned to London. Anti-Zia demonstrations continued when martial law was lifted in Pakistan at the end of the year, which propelled her to return to Pakistan in April 1986. Seeing the overwhelming public response to her return, she publicly called for the resignation of Zia Ul Haq.

Benazir was elected co-chairwoman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), a centre-left and the largest political party in Pakistan, along with her mother. Free elections were finally held in 1988 and she herself became the Prime Minister. She was then only 35 and was one of the youngest chief executives in the world, and the first woman to serve as prime minister in an Islamic country. However, her government was short-lived as it was dismissed in 1990 following charges of corruption. Nawaz Sharif was sworn in as the Prime Minister after the October 1990 elections. She initiated an anti-corruption campaign, and in 1993, she again came into power and was re-elected as Prime Minister. During her stint, she brought electricity to the countryside and built schools all over the country. She worked towards modernising Pakistan. Yet again her government was rocked by corruption charges and in 1996, Bhutto's government was dissolved by the then president Farooq Leghari. After living in exile for nine years in London, Benazir returned to Pakistan in 2007, defying death threats from radical Islamists, and the hostility of the government.

She was greeted warmly by enthusiastic crowds, but within hours of her arrival, her motorcade was attacked by a suicide bomber. Benazir survived this first assassination attempt. A few weeks before the general election scheduled for January 2008, the extremists struck again. After a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, a gunman fired at her car before exploding a bomb, killing himself and more than 20 people. This time Benazir Bhutto had to pay with her life. In the wake of her death, there was mayhem in Pakistan.

Though Benazir's image was smeared by the corruption charges against her, her efforts to build a democratic Pakistan could not be neglected. She had shown the light and hope to the people of Pakistan. She had advocated for human rights and was against controversial laws (such as Hudood and Zina ordinances) that curbed the rights of women in Pakistan. She had tried her best to present a different picture of Pakistan to the world. A popular democratic figure, her death is indeed a great loss for Pakistan and its people.

Team MSN She