Zulfikar ali bhutto

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (in Urdu, ذوالفقار علی بھٹو; in Sindhi, ذوالفقار علي ڀُٽو), (* 5 January 1928 - April 4, 1979), was a Pakistani politician. He was Pakistan's 4th President from 1971 to 1973, Pakistan's 9th Prime Minister from 1973 to 1977, and Chairman of the Pakistan People's Party which he founded in 1967.

He found himself in the peculiar situation of being a civilian administering martial law. He was deposed in a coup by General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, after which he was sentenced to death for the murder of a political opponent in 1974 and hanged on April 4, 1979.

His daughter Benazir Bhutto was Pakistan's two-time prime minister.

Biography

Her father was Shah Nawaz Bhutto, from a prominent and aristocratic Sunni Muslim family. Some claim that he was from a Shia family. In 1947 he entered the University of Southern California to study political science. Bhutto married on September 8, 1951, in Karachi. As a result of that marriage, four children were born. In 1957 he became the youngest member of the Pakistani delegation to the United Nations. Five years later, he was appointed Pakistan's Foreign Minister and resigned in 1967. After his resignation, on November 30, 1967, he founded the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in Lahore.

Born in present-day Sindh and educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Oxford University, Bhutto trained as a lawyer at Lincoln's Inn, before entering politics as one of the president's cabinet members Iskander Mirza and was assigned to various ministries during the military rule of President Ayub Khan from 1958. Appointed foreign minister in 1963, Bhutto was a proponent of Operation Gibraltar in Kashmir, which led to war with India in 1965. After the Tashkent Agreement ended hostilities, Bhutto fell out with Ayub Khan and was sacked from the government.

Bhutto founded the PPP in 1967 on a socialist platform and contested the general election held by President Yahya Khan in 1970. While the Awami League won the most seats overall, the PPP won the most seats in West Pakistan; the two parties were unable to agree on a new constitution, particularly on the issue of the Six Point Movement, which many in West Pakistan saw as a way to divide the country. Subsequent uprisings led to the secession of Bangladesh, and Pakistan lost the war against Bangladesh-allied India in 1971. Bhutto was handed over to the presidency in December 1971 and a state of emergency was imposed. As Bhutto set out to rebuild Pakistan, he stated that his intention was to "rebuild trust and rebuild hope for the future."

In July 1972, Bhutto regained 43,600 prisoners of war and 5,000 square miles of Indian-controlled territory after signing the Simla Agreement. She strengthened ties with China and Saudi Arabia, recognized Bangladesh, and hosted the second Organization of the Islamic Conference in Lahore in 1974. Domestically, Bhutto's reign saw parliament unanimously pass a new constitution in 1973, which she named to Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry President and moved on to the new post of Prime Minister. He also played an integral role in starting the country's nuclear program. However, Bhutto's nationalization of much of Pakistan's infant industries, health care, and educational institutions was met with economic stagnation. After the dissolution of the provincial feudal governments in Balochistan was met with riots, Bhutto also ordered an army operation in the province in 1973, causing thousands of civilian casualties.

Despite civil disorder, the PPP won parliamentary elections in 1977 by a wide margin. However, the opposition alleged widespread electoral fraud, and violence escalated across the country. On July 5 of that same year, Bhutto was deposed in a military coup by his designated army chief Zia-ul-Haq before being tried and controversially executed by the Supreme Court of Pakistan in 1979 for authorizing the assassination of a political opponent..

Bhutto remains a controversial figure, hailed for his nationalism and internationalist agenda, yet he is criticized for intimidating his political opponents and for human rights violations. He is often considered one of Pakistan's most important leaders and his party, the PPP, remains one of Pakistan's largest, with his daughter Benazir Bhutto being elected prime minister twice, while her son-in-law and Benazir's husband Asif Ali Zardari served as president.