Benazir Bhutto (Urdu: بینظیر بھٹو) (b. 21 June 1953 in Karachi) was the first woman to lead a post-colonial Muslim state. The charismatic Bhutto was elected Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1988, only to be deposed 20 months later by the country's military-supported president Ghulam Ishaq Khan who controversially used the Eighth Amendment to dissolve parliament and force an election. She was re-elected in 1993 but was dismissed three years later amid various corruption scandals by then president Farooq Leghari, who also used the Eighth Amendment discretionary powers.

Benazir Bhutto is the eldest child of the deposed Pakistani premier Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Begum Nusrat Bhutto, who was of Kurdish-Iranian origin. Her paternal grandfather was Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a Sindhi and a key figure in Pakistan's Independence movement.

Bhutto attended Lady Jennings Nursery School and then the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Karachi. After two years of schooling at the Rawalpindi Presentation Convent, she was sent to the Jesus and Mary Convent at Murree. She passed her O-level examinations at the age of 15. In April 1969, she was admitted to Harvard University's Radcliffe College. In June 1973, Benazir graduated from Harvard with a degree in political science; during her time at college, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She attended Oxford University in the autumn of 1973 and graduated with an MA degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. She was elected President of the prestigious Oxford Union.

After completing university, she returned to Pakistan, but in the course of her father's imprisonment and execution, she was placed under house arrest. Having been allowed in 1984 to go back to the UK, she became leader in exile of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), her father's party, but was unable to make her political presence felt in Pakistan until the death of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.

On November 16, 1988, in the first open election in more than a decade, Benazir's PPP won the single largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly. Bhutto was sworn in as Prime Minister of a coalition government on December 2, becoming at age thirty five the youngest person and also the first woman to head the government of a Muslim-majority state in modern times. That same year, People Magazine included Ms. Bhutto in its list of The Fifty Most Beautiful People.

After being dismissed by the then-president of Pakistan under charges of corruption, her party lost the elections held in October. She served as the leader of the opposition while Nawaz Sharif became PM for the next three years. In October 1993 elections were again held, which were won by the PPP coalition, returning Bhutto to office until 1996, when once again her government was dismissed on corruption charges.

Bhutto was charged with corruption and faced a number of legal proceedings (the resolution of which seems to vary depending on opinion) in Pakistan. She has also been charged with laundering state-owned money through Swiss banks, in a case that remains before the Swiss courts. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, spent eight years in prison under similar charges of corruption. Kept in solitary confinement, he claims that his time in prison involved torture; human rights groups also claim that Zardari's rights have been violated^{[citation needed]}. Zardari was released from jail in 2004, but Bhutto and her husband continue to face allegations by (among others) the Pakistani government, of having stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by demanding "commissions" on government contracts and tenders. Over the past decade, the couple have faced an approximate combined total of 90 legal cases^{[citation needed]}; while eight cases still remain^{[citation needed]}, Bhutto maintains that the charges levelled against her and her husband are purely politically motivated^{[citation needed]}.

A recently released Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) report presents information suggesting that Benazir Bhutto was ousted from power in 1990 as a result of a witch-hunt approved by then-president Ghulam Ishaq Khan^{[citation needed]}. The AGP report says that Khan had approved a payment of Rs. 28 million to marshal "an army of legal advisors" for the purpose of filing 19 corruption cases against Bhutto and her husband in 1990-92, and was referenced in one of Pakistan's English-language daily newspapers, The News, on the 25th of July, 2006.^{[citation needed]}

The return of her sole surviving brother, Mir Murtaza Bhutto, from exile in Syria in 1993, caused the Prime Minster a number of problems including a public disagreement with her mother who had sided with her brother.

Mir Murtaza was immediately arrested and jailed for about half a year on murder and sedition charges. He was accused of masterminding the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistani Airlines plane that left one passenger dead. While incarcerated, he ran for, and won a seat in the Sindh Assembly, after which he was released.

Soon after the release, he warned the government not to arrest him again, saying: "There would be trouble if the police tries to arrest me without a warrant."

In 1995, he formed a group that split from the ruling Pakistan People's Party and accused his sister of corruption.

On the night of Thursday 19th September 1996, Murtaza was shot dead along with six other party activists in a police encounter near his residence. Several weeks later, on November 5, the PPP government was again dismissed. Asif Zardari was charged with the murder and the case is still pending.

It was during Bhutto's rule that the Taliban gained prominence in Afghanistan due to her support^{[citation needed]}. Bhutto and the Taliban were openly opposed to each other when it came to social issues. According to the Taliban codes, as a woman she had no right to be in power. However, she saw the Taliban as a group that could stabilise Afghanistan and then allow economic access to trade with Central Asian republics^{[citation needed]}. Her government provided military and financial support for the Taliban, even as far as sending a very small number of the Pakistani army into Afghanistan^{[citation needed]}. The Taliban took power in Kabul in September 1996.

During election campaigns, the Bhutto government voiced concerns over social issues of women, health and discrimination against women. Bhutto also announced plans to set up women's police stations, courts and women's development banks.

Despite these promises, Bhutto did not propose any legislation to improve welfare services for women. During her election campaigns, Bhutto promised to repeal controversial laws (such as Hudood and Zina ordinances) that curtail rights of women in Pakistan. However, during her two terms in power, her party did not fulfill these promises due to immense pressure from the opposition.

Her party did, however, initiate legislation during General Musharraf's regime to repeal the Zina ordinance. These efforts were defeated by the right-wing religious parties that dominated the legislatures at the time.

In 2002 Pakistan's current president, Pervez Musharraf introduced a new amendment to Pakistan's constitution, banning prime ministers from serving more than two terms. This disqualifies Bhutto from ever holding the office again. This move was widely considered to be a direct attack on former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

Bhutto is currently (as of September 2004) based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she cares for her children and her mother, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and from where she travels around the world giving lectures and keeping in touch with the Pakistan Peoples Party's supporters.

Benazir and her three children (Bilawal, Bakhtawar and Asifa) were reunited with her husband and their father in December 2004 after a period of more than five years. Bhutto has vowed to return to Pakistan and run for Prime Minister in the next general elections scheduled for November of 2007.