Deporting the Messenger

For four years, the Jakarta branch of the International Crisis Group (ICG) has provided one of the clearest windows into the troubled state of Indonesia. The Brussels-based ICG's mission is to use research to help prevent violent conflict, and it has been in the right place at a turbulent time: American human-rights activist Sidney Jones, head of the organization's Southeast Asian office, and a handful of expatriate and Indonesian researchers have produced 39 uncompromising reports on subjects ranging from bloody conflicts in Aceh, Ambon and East Timor to the origins of Islamic terror in the region.

But...