Pakistan's Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani has fired the country's defense secretary on Wednesday, a bold move considering Gilani was warning of a military coup less than a month ago. A power struggle between the nation's military and its civilian government has plagued the country for almost its entire existence, but the current tensions regarding a military coup have been building for weeks, and this certainly isn't a peace-making move. According to Reuters, Gilani released a statement in which defense secretary Naeem Khalid Lodhi, a retired general, was fired for  "gross misconduct and illegal action which created misunderstanding" between the state's institutions. The AP has more on the specifics of that "gross misconduct", as an unnamed source told the news agency that Lodhi had been fired because of "misconduct" relating to his role in submitting statements by the army and spy chief to the Supreme Court about the "Memo-gate" scandal. Reuters spoke to an anonymous military official who said the situation created by firing Lodhi was "very serious", but anyone paying attention to Gilani's public warnings of a military coup or a report that a Pakistani general was purportedly visiting Arab countries to garner support for a government overthrow could have told you that.

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Alexander Abad-Santos