Benazir Bhutto: Daughter of the East

Benazir Bhutto is the daughter of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was executed by President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq in 1979. At his death, she inherited the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party, the largest and most powerful mass-based group in the country. In 1981, she was herself imprisoned, spending three months in solitary confinement. After her release, she came to England to spend four months in exile. In 1985 she returned to Pakistan to bury her younger brother, Shahnawaz, who had died in mysterious circumstances in the south of France. A few months later she was back once more in her country. Hundreds of thousands of supporters thronged the streets to greet her in mass rallies as she called for the overthrow of President Zia’s regime. Again, she was imprisoned and then released. Benazir Bhutto tells the story of those years and explains why she has turned her back on personal tragedy and has donned her father’s mantle with that iron determination that has astonished observers throughout the world.