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Assassination of Benazir Bhutto
Category: History & Politics Key figures: Benazir Bhutto (victim); Baitullah Mehsud (accused mastermind); Pervez Musharraf (President of Pakistan); Asif Ali Zardari (Bhutto’s husband, PPP co-chair)
Summary
On December 27, 2007, Benazir Bhutto — twice-former Prime Minister of Pakistan and leader of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) — was assassinated in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. She had returned to Pakistan in October 2007 after nearly nine years of self-imposed exile, following a negotiated amnesty deal with President Pervez Musharraf, and was campaigning ahead of general elections scheduled for January 2008.
The attack occurred after a political rally at Liaquat National Bagh. As Bhutto stood through the sunroof of her SUV to wave to supporters, gunshots were fired at her and a suicide bomb was immediately detonated alongside the vehicle. She was transported to Rawalpindi General Hospital and declared dead at 18:16 local time (13:16 UTC). Twenty-three other people were killed in the blast. A Scotland Yard investigation concluded in February 2008 that the force of the explosion slammed Bhutto’s head against a lever on the vehicle’s escape hatch, causing the fatal skull fracture; the PPP rejected this finding and demanded a United Nations inquiry, alleging a government cover-up.
Pakistani intelligence, the CIA, and Pakistan’s government quickly attributed the assassination to Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and an ally of al-Qaeda operating from South Waziristan. Mehsud denied involvement. Bhutto had been warned on the morning of the attack by the director general of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that an attempt on her life was planned that day. A UN commission appointed in 2009 concluded in its 2010 report that Pakistani officials had “failed profoundly” to provide Bhutto with adequate security and had subsequently impeded investigations into the attack.
Bhutto’s death triggered violent protests across Pakistan that left dozens more people dead and caused widespread damage to infrastructure. The government imposed emergency measures in several cities. The January 8 elections were postponed to February 18, 2008; the PPP, now co-chaired by Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari, won the largest share of seats and Zardari became President in September 2008.
Significance
Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to lead a Muslim-majority country, having served as Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996. Her assassination removed the most prominent democratic opposition figure in Pakistan and deepened the country’s political instability at a critical moment: President Musharraf had declared a state of emergency in November 2007, suspending the constitution, and U.S. pressure had secured both its lifting and Bhutto’s return as a counterweight. Her death undermined Western hopes of a stable civilian-military power-sharing arrangement in a nuclear-armed state then heavily engaged in the U.S.-backed war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The assassination accelerated Musharraf’s political decline. The February 2008 elections resulted in a coalition government hostile to him, and he resigned the presidency in August 2008. Bhutto’s murder remains a landmark moment in the long struggle between Pakistani democratic forces and extremist violence, and it catalyzed renewed international focus on the country’s security situation. The PPP’s electoral success following her death has been attributed in part to a sympathy wave; her image and legacy became central to Pakistani opposition politics for years afterward.
Related
- Virginia Tech Shooting — Another defining act of political violence in 2007.
- Al Gore and IPCC Nobel Peace Prize — Second major History & Politics milestone of 2007.
- iPhone Launch — Contemporaneous landmark event of 2007.