With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Nusrat Bhutto, Political Force in Pakistan, Dies at 82

Nusrat Bhutto, a near-mythic figure in Pakistan’s modern history, whose husband, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979 after being deposed as prime minister in a military coup, and whose daughter, the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, was killed by a suicide bomber while campaigning for office in 2007, died Sunday in Dubai. She was 82.

Mrs. Bhutto, long a political force in her country, had cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, family members told The Associated Press. A throng of mourners at her burial service in southern Pakistan on Tuesday was led by her son-in-law, Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan’s president.

Mrs. Bhutto was the daughter of an Iranian soap manufacturer who fled Mumbai and resettled his family in Karachi after the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947 into majority Hindu and Muslim countries, respectively.

When she became the second wife of Mr. Bhutto in 1951, she joined one of Pakistan’s wealthiest and most influential families....

Read entire article at NYT