Benazir Bhutto’s American support network

No other foreign politician appreciated the importance of connections more than the late Benazir Bhutto.

The Pakistani opposition leader, assassinated Thursday in Rawalpindi, made regular trips to the U.S., paid the D.C. lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller hundreds of thousands of dollars, and cultivated a long list of friends among American journalists and politicians.

A graduate of Radcliffe and Oxford, she maintained decades-long friendships with classmates. Commentator Arianna Huffington, who had known Bhutto since their student days, described her as “fearlessness epitomized.”

Among Bhutto’s many American friends and advisers were Washington Post columnists E.J. Dionne and Michael Kinsley. Mark Siegel, former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, has co-written a book with her, set for publication in 2008.

The U.S. played a major role in her return to Pakistan last October, after being forced from power in 1996. But in the end, support in America was not enough to protect her in her home country.

“I always thought this was roughly how it would end for her, but I didn’t think it would happen today,” friend Peter W. Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador and son of economist John Kenneth Galbraith, told The New York Times.

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