Pak generals can't decide coup plan

Will they or won't they? It looks like the Pakistan Army and ISI can't quite make up their minds whether or not to overthrow the government of President Asif Ali Zardari. Yesterday prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani sacked the defence secretary - a civil servant - for "gross misconduct and illegal action" and replaced him with a bureaucrat closer to the PPP.
The sacked secretary, army loyalist Retired Lt. Gen. Naeem Khalid Lodhi, is said to have forwarded documents to the Supreme Court on behalf of army chief Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani and ISI chief Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha. These concerned the so-called Memogate scandal in which Gilani is alleged to have sent a memo that requested support from the Americans against a possible coup attempt by the Pakistan military.
Lodhi has been replaced by Cabinet Secretary Narghis Sethi, the first woman to hold such an appointment, which is usually given to a retired military figure.
The statements submitted to the court by the generals argued that the memo in question was part of a conspiracy against the Army.
Gilani added to the pressure on the Army by giving an interview to a Chinese newspaper which said that Kayani and Pasha had violated the constitution by sending documents directly to the court, without going via the government. This in turn provoked a furious reaction from the General Staff who issued a statement saying that Gilani's allegation was "very serious". It didn't help that Kayani was on an official visit to China when Gilani gave his interview.
The Army statement went on to say: "There can be no allegation more serious than what the Honourable Prime Minister has leveled against COAS and DG ISI and has unfortunately charged the officers for violation of the Constitution of the Country. This has very serious ramifications with potentially grievous consequences for the Country."
As if things were not bad enough, the Supreme Court has also threatened to dismiss Gilani's government if he refuses to open a corruption case against President Zardari by next Monday.
The future of the government is clearly hanging by a thread, with both the Army and the Supreme Court unsure that a coup would be popular. However, nothing can be ruled out.
If a coup does take place, what's the odds that Imran Khan will be called on to give the generals a human face?

Drone campaign a casualty of Davis affair

Are poor relations between the CIA and Pakistan's ISI affecting the drone missile campaign in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)? According to statistics compiled by The Long War Journal there have been no strikes in FATA since 23 January. This is the third longest period without any strikes since the campaign was ramped up in August 2008. Although this could be due to poor weather conditions - it is winter in FATA at present - the fact that US security contractor Raymond Davis was arrested on 27 January seems to be a far more plausible explanation.
Whether this is Pakistan's ISI flexing its muscles, much as it has done in the past by blocking the border to Afghanistan and preventing military supplies reaching their destination, or (less likely) a CIA effort to put pressure on the Pakistanis, is unclear. However, tensions between the two organisations have been evident for some time. In December the CIA station chief in Islamabad had to leave the country in a hurry after he was named in a legal case brought by relatives of civilians killed by drone strikes in FATA.
Shortly before that, the head of the ISI, Lt Gen Ahmed Shuja Pasha, was accused in a US lawsuit brought in Brooklyn by relatives of an American rabbi and his wife killed at their hostel of being involved in the 2008 attacks on Mumbai. Tit for tat? It certainly looked like it.
The Davis case is likely to make relations between the two countries get worse rather than better in the immediate future. American policy has been to exert maximum diplomatic  pressure to get their man out of jail. So far we have seen statements by the head of the CIA, President Obama, late-night phone calls from Hillary Clinton to President Zardari and a failed mission to Pakistan by Senator John Kerry to get Davis released. In addition, the Pakistan Ambassador to Washington has been threatened with being kicked out of the country and there have also been threats to cut aid to Pakistan.
The only impact all this haranguing appears to be having is to inflame public opinion in Pakistan and to destabilise the PPP government. Already the Foreign Minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, has been sacked for refusing to kowtow to US pressure; he refused to concede that Davis had full diplomatic status. And extremist political parties such as the Jamat-e-Islami are saying that any attempt to give immunity to Davis will be a disgrace for the country.
Meanwhile Davis has been remanded in custody for another three weeks and the Lahore High Court has now ordered the Punjab police to arrest the driver of the second vehicle involved in the incident, which ran over and killed an innocent bystander. The court has ordered the vehicle to be impounded and put three further American consular staff on the official exit control list .
The stakes in the Davis case are already extremely high and appear to have been exacerbated by the high-handed US approach to the affair, which reeks of nineteenth century gunboat diplomacy. Extra-territoriality, as it was then called, inflamed passions against foreign powers throughout India and China at that time and nothing much has changed.
Update: Jim White at the website firedoglake has more information on Davis' background and his connections to Nevada and Colorado.