436 বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্রঃ পঞ্চম খন্ড the story of an Bengali banker, who had to buy his safety and that of his family from military officers with a large sum. "Sometimes men are marched at gun point." Foisie writes, "leaving the women to wail. Some men don not return or are returned beaten." The so-called Peace Committees set up by the army authorities and the local militia raised by them are but another tool for terrorizing the people. Mark Tally of the B.B.C London Times says the local militia are mostly thugs, and glad of the opportunity to settle old scores. ৩০ জুলাই, ১৯৭১ Army repression in East Bengal resulting in the postponement of a return to democracy in Pakistan has finally started to have reverberations in West Pakistan itself. : no less a person than Mr. Bhutto. who has been considered the collaborator par excellence with the army. It should not be forgotten that the army and Mr. Bhutto acted in concert earlier this year to thwart effectively Pakistan's return to a democratic set up following the elections of December 1970... At that stage it was clear that the interests of the army and those represented by Mr. Bhutto had converged. Their joint aim was to deny the transfer of effective political power to the duly elected majority in Pakistan's National Assembly, namely the Awami League. The basic reasons behind this move were many, including the fear that with the Awami League in power the equation between East and West Pakistan will be radically altered, the army will lose its financial autonomy and the hate-India campaign on which Pakistan's ruling elite has thrived so far will collapse like a house of cards. Moreover, Mr. Bhutto with his well-known love for power, was not able to tolerate a situation in which he would be personally deprived of any significant share in the power structure of Pakistan. Mr Bhutto had probably pinned his hopes on the fact that with the Awami League out of the way one of two things would happen. Either, power would be transferred to his People's Party, the second largest party in the National Assembly, at the Centre, or, in the event of East Bengal continuing under martial low at least the four provinces in West Pakistan would have representative government restored to them. In this case his party would come to power in the two most populous provinces of the western wing, Punjab and Sind, As it turned out, all these calculations went away. General Yahya Khan refused to transfer power to the elected representatives in the western wing as long as, what he called, "normalcy' had not returned to East Bengal. Since there was no indications of return to such normalcy Mr. Bhutto felt his designs frustrated. Moreover, there were indications of increasing restiveness within his party as a result of this delay in the transfer of power. As a result of all this. Mr. Bhutto in his frustration tended to become more and more vocal in his demand for transfer of power, this becoming a source of embarrassment to the military regime. The honeymoon period apparently had come to an end. It was probably with this in mind that the regime sent him on a jaunt abroad, ostensibly to present Pakistan's case on Bangladesh. It is now reported that in an interview with an Iranian paper in Tahran. Mr. Bhutto has stated that there must be a political settlement in Pakistan and the Awami League, the
