Remembering Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto 19 Years on
Transformative, obstinate, lethal. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto tried to reverse what General Zia Haq so ardently forced on the Pakistani people; a religious and social fundamentalism that stripped the very soul from the Pakistani common soul. Gone were the days of secularist control, and attempts at further democratic liberalisation. This is not to say that the system was perfect, but a military coup is certainly never better. As late as 2024, the trial and execution of her father by General Haq has been contested at the highest levels of Pakistani legal society. Benazir’s life may have been plagued by death, but in that silence, she has been given new life. So much so, that I remember chatting with a student some years back about their own fascination with Prime Minister Bhutto. So energized that even 19 years on, she remains.
Benazir, like all global majority women before her was failed by the west before she could even take flight. American, and broad western capitulation to the Haq totalitarian dictatorship due to his support of anti-Soviet Afghan fighters being based in Pakistan’s North-West frontier province. The Afghanistan battle between the USSR and USA, beyond serving as a further proxy conflict during the Cold War serves to highlight nascent western capitulation to their very own values and ultimately, the creation of the very fundamentalism it went on to wage war against despite its deft hand in creating the existence of said fundamentalism.
In July 1977, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq overthrew Pakistan’s elected government in a military coup, beginning eleven years of martial law, repression and authoritarian rule. Zia suspended fundamental constitutional rights, banned political parties and trade unions, censored the press, imprisoned and publicly flogged dissidents, and oversaw the execution of former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto following a trial that Pakistan’s Supreme Court later found had failed to meet the requirements of a fair trial.
His regime also imposed a sweeping programme of Islamisation that entrenched discriminatory laws against women and religious minorities, while using religion to consolidate military rule. The legacy was profoundly damaging: a generation grew up under dictatorship, while Benazir Bhutto emerged as a symbol of the democratic resistance to the system that had hanged her father.
Now with context aside, one can truly come to understand the full scope of the political scene for which she inherited; fractured, distorted and warped. It is upon the remains of this political scene that Benazir became the first women prime minister of a Muslim majority country. One where a constant upward battle against forced faux Islamization by the previous military dictator and patriarchal manipulation meant that the battle was not just for political success but for ideological control with a people who had become particularly ideologically disenfranchised.
Zia’s form of rule was facilitated through Islamic ideological distortion. Pakistan before Zia Haq’s dictatorship was significantly more liberal. His rule was never voted in in fair democratic elections and serves as both a catalyst for the success of Bhutto (Jr) and for the spread of Islamic fundamentalism through both government and non-government based organisations. After her party the PPP ( ) won 93 of the 205 National Assembly seats contested, the largest share by far but not, however, an outright majority. Bhutto formed a coalition government and took office on 2 December. Despite facing significant institutional constraints, with both the presidency and military retaining considerable influence, Bhutto was able to improve some civil liberty impediments alongside the release of over 17,000 prisoners or people convicted in absentia, and the review of cases brought before martial-law courts. These were not insignificant developments, particularly given the political climate she inherited. Yet the task of reversing eleven years of authoritarian rule required more than restoring some freedoms. It required rebuilding institutions, confronting entrenched interests and establishing a political culture in which democratic government could survive beyond the tenure of any one individual.
Bhutto's first term was marked by this contradiction. She had secured a historic electoral victory, but the presidency and military continued to wield considerable influence over the state. Without an outright parliamentary majority, her government also faced the practical difficulty of implementing a transformative agenda while negotiating with political opponents. In November 1989, she survived a parliamentary no-confidence motion, but the narrowness of her political position exposed the fragility of her administration. Her government would ultimately be dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan in August 1990, amid allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
There is, of course, a distinction between the allegations used to justify her removal and the genuine shortcomings of her administration. Her government struggled to deliver substantial economic and social reforms, while ethnic and political violence, particularly in Sindh, remained a serious problem. Karachi experienced persistent instability, and the state's inability to provide lasting security was a legitimate criticism of her government's performance. Although these conflicts had deeper roots and cannot fairly be attributed to Bhutto alone, the people affected by them were entitled to expect more effective governance. Likewise, corruption allegations involving individuals close to her government damaged public confidence, even where allegations should not be mistaken for proof of personal wrongdoing.
Perhaps most significantly, Bhutto did not deliver the extent of legal reform that many women had hoped her election would bring. Her premiership challenged the assumption that political authority belonged exclusively to men, but symbolic representation could not by itself dismantle the discriminatory laws and patriarchal structures entrenched under Zia. The Hudood Ordinances remained in place, and her government did not achieve the sweeping transformation of women's legal rights that many of her supporters expected. Her political circumstances were undeniably difficult, yet this remains an important part of her record. A woman occupying the highest office in the country was a historic achievement; ensuring that ordinary women could exercise greater freedom and equality was a separate task, and one that remained unfinished.
It must be noted that the cards were set against Bhutto from the very start of the unfair trial and execution by the military dictator Haq. Fighting a nation forcibly indoctrinated and warped with peculiar gusto, her critics site some failures surrounding speed of policy and handling of some domestic policy and dissent. Bhutto was a breath of fresh air after rogue dictatorship crushing.
Bhutto’s success was curtailed not only through national institutional control, but also by the very western forces who sought a liberal thinker like herself in power. This betrayal is evident through indirect policy and material support of radicals that at some time served western interests (think of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and US Intelligence services). It is radicalism like this that ultimately led to the execution and ultimate martyrdom of Benazir. Radical Islam is useful and weaponised, arguably this is dual-fold utility, whereby the very western forces applauding a woman in power in a Muslim country, made it untenable for her premiership to continue and near impossible to enact and sustain lasting, and by all accounts, necessary, reform beyond domestic and ethnic tensions already held over from the previous dictatorship.
Nevertheless, to judge Bhutto solely by the reforms she failed to deliver would be to ignore the conditions under which she governed. Her first term was an attempt to restore civilian democracy within a system in which unelected institutions retained considerable power. Her shortcomings were real, but so were the constraints imposed upon her. The question is not whether Benazir Bhutto was a flawless leader, but whether her political legacy can be understood without acknowledging both the democratic possibilities she represented and the institutional forces that restricted them.
Nineteen years after her assassination, Bhutto remains a figure whose significance extends beyond Pakistan's borders. Her life speaks to the contradictions of political representation, the limits of democratic transitions and the willingness of powerful states to compromise their stated principles when strategic interests take precedence. It also reminds us that the election of a woman, however historic, cannot alone resolve the structural inequalities that shape a society.
I remember watching her assassination on live tv news as a seven-year-old and thinking how disgustingly evil those dirty men were that slaughtered her. Since then, reading, learning and appreciating her persistence, and importantly, how much she angered the many men against her, gives me the renewed energy to keep going.
Remembering Shahid Benazir Bhutto should therefore mean more than commemorating a life cut short. It should mean examining the political inheritance she confronted, the decisions she made and the reforms that remained beyond her government's reach. Her legacy is neither beyond criticism nor reducible to the accusations of her opponents. It belongs to a longer struggle over who gets to govern Pakistan, whose rights the state protects and whether democratic freedoms can become lasting institutions rather than temporary concessions. Those questions remain relevant today, and they are precisely why, nineteen years on, Benazir Bhutto continues to matter.
We will avenge you dear Benazir.
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