Benazir is a former prime minister of Pakistan, who has lived much of her life since then in exhile, because of persecution by Islamic extremists, and was killed today, apparently in a suicide attack.

From Bloomberg:

Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in an election-rally attack in Rawalpindi, threatening the stability of a nuclear-armed nation that is a focal point of the West’s war on terror.

At least 16 people died and more than 60 were injured in the gunfire-and-bomb attack on Bhutto’s rally, police said. The opposition leader, 54, had survived a previous attempt on her life when she returned from exile two months ago.

Rioting broke out as her supporters gathered outside the hospital where her death was confirmed and in cities across Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf, who had allowed her return to participate in parliamentary elections planned for Jan. 8, appealed for calm in a message broadcast on state television…

Wikipedia has the run-down on the controversy surrounding her political life, here, and CTV has a memorial, here.

From Howard Chua-Eoan, of Time Magazine, this morning:

…She was a child of privilege, and took the mantle of power from her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the fiery and magnetic founder of the Pakistan People’s Party, who himself would become a martyr for democracy when he was executed in in 1979 by the military dictatorship of General Zia ul Haq. She inherited her bearing and physical presence from her mother Nusrat Ispahan, from a distinguished Kurdish family from Iran. Educated at Radcliffe and Harvard, she would also study law at Oxford. Her family and close Western friends knew her as “Pinky.”

As a Muslim woman leader, Bhutto was almost an iconic figure in the West. But her actual career in office was one of great populist spectacles and little governmental achievement. It was a personna she parlayed. “I am not one of those leaders who sell lies and buy time,” she told TIME in the mid-1990s. “No leader, no dictator could do what I have done….”

The Pakistan People’s Party has a list of interviews and articles by Bhutto, here, including the last article she wrote for the Christian Science Monitor, published December 9, 2007:

…Musharraf wants the world to believe that the coming election, though not perfect, will be “good enough for Pakistan” given the country’s difficult circumstances. But the current circumstances are of the regime’s making. Those in charge can – and must – do much better on this count.

The international community must send a clear message that it will not be an accessory to this coming crime. It must not wait to see if the elections on Jan. 8 are free and fair. It must insist on a minimum set of benchmarks to be met for the election to be recognized as free and fair. If the benchmarks are ignored, the international community must be prepared to signal its displeasure to the Musharraf regime in specific, tangible ways.

Flawed elections will worsen instability in Pakistan as civil society and political parties protest. Imposing international restrictions after the fact will be fruitless and only deepen anti-American sentiment.

At the very least, America can and should prod Musharraf to give Pakistanis an independent election commission, a neutral caretaker administration, and an end to blatant vote manipulation.

America is the world’s most powerful democracy. By standing up for democracy at this critical time, Washington can give this nuclear-armed nation an opportunity to reverse the tide of extremism that today threatens not only Pakistan but the larger world community as well.

Michelle Malkin has the updates on how the politicians are, of course, capitalizing on this woman’s misfortune, here.