How much time do we have for reports?

While four different groups work with a Chinese menu of options (Link is to the Iraq Insider's entry on said options), the actual situation on the ground continues to evolve -- with worrying trends. How long does it take to draft a report with options we all can anticipate and then scan that report into .pdf form?

Sunni cleric to be arrested?

The Los Angeles Times:

BAGHDAD — Iraq's Shiite-led government issued an arrest warrant Thursday for the country's leading Sunni Arab cleric, accusing him of colluding with insurgents, a potentially explosive charge that could exacerbate tensions between the country's warring sectarian groups and further divide a fragile national government.

The move against Harith Dhari, head of the Muslim Scholars Assn., came two days after an audacious daytime kidnapping in Baghdad ruptured the government of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, setting Sunni politicians against Shiites.

In an appearance on state-run TV late Thursday evening, Interior Minister Jawad Bolani, a Shiite, announced that Dhari was wanted on a charge of inciting violence. "The government's policy is that anyone who tries to spread division and strife among the Iraq people will be chased by our security agencies," Bolani said.

Dhari has been a vocal, sometimes sarcastic, critic of the government, questioning the legitimacy of the criminal trials of former President Saddam Hussein and ridiculing the government's reconciliation efforts.

The AP:

BAGHDAD (AP) — The head of Iraq's most influential Sunni Muslim organization said Friday that the government's bid to arrest him was illegal, and his spokesman urged Sunni politicians to quit the parliament and government.

The brewing political crisis threatened the Shiite dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and could provoke an even more violent surge in sectarian conflict as Iraq teeters on the edge of civil war.

Coalition of the no longer willing

The Washington Times:

As U.S. generals and lawmakers debated this week whether to cut, raise or hold steady the 141,000-strong U.S. troop contingent in Iraq, the coalition of foreign countries willing to deploy their forces in Iraq has shrunk steadily -- and soon could shrink even more.

Twenty-three countries remain in the U.S.-led coalition and the United Nations' mission serving in and around Iraq, down from a high of 42 that joined the United States in the invasion or the postwar occupation of Iraq. More than half of those contributors have fewer than 150 troops, engineers or military trainers in the Iraq theater.

This trend is problematic because the job is getting harder, more labor-intensive.

Fallujah

The AP:

Security is tight and snipers abound, but Fallujah _ once an extremely violent Sunni insurgent bastion where the charred bodies of four Blackwater security men were hung on a bridge _ has become a refuge from the death squads and mortar battles in Baghdad. U.S. Marines say about 150 Iraqis flee here each week from the capital, 40 miles to the east.

Unlike Baghdad, which houses large numbers of both Muslim sects, Fallujah's population is overwhelmingly Sunni Arab. As a result, Fallujah has not experienced the raging sectarian warfare that has the capital teetering on the brink of civil war. The migration is part of a larger exodus out of Baghdad, where entire neighborhoods have been uprooted.