Freedom House describes a country's freedom on a one-to-seven scale, with seven as the least free, for political rights and for civil liberties. For example, the U.S. receives a "one" for both political rights and civil liberties, while North Korea has a "seven" for each. According to this metric, political rights changed in only one of the region's 21 countries and territories: Tunisia, where peaceful revolution brought the score down from a Stalinist seven to an Eastern European-style three. Civil liberties actually got worse in the aggregate. Revolution and reform brought one-point drops in Tunisia, Libya, and Lebanon; but fearful dictators and bloody crackdowns saw the scores rise by a point each in six countries: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and the Western Sahara.

In all, with three revolutions, hundreds of protests, and thousands dying for democracy, Middle Eastern freedom improved by a lousy point, according to Freedom House's 14-point system. If you exclude Tunisia, which saw by far the greatest gains, Middle Eastern freedom actually worsened by four points. The report also notes three "trends," indications that a country is becoming more or less free but has not yet changed enough to be reflected in the scores: improvement in Egypt and the retrenchment of freedoms in Iran and in Israel, the region's freest society.

The Arab Spring is far from over, as activists and citizens (and dictators) in the region and especially in the six worsening countries are well aware. The revolutions may or may not continue, but the protests and crackdowns are still ongoing, and what they will mean for the world's most unfree people is still impossible to say. Post-Qaddafi Libya could establish a democracy or crumble under the strain; Egypt's new military dictators may grip power tighter than Hosni Mubarak or they may allow some kind of quasi-democracy; Syria's Bashar al-Assad, who has made his country as unfree as North Korea according to Freedom House scores, may hold on to power or he may fall to the growing insurgency there. But 2012 will likely be the year that, for better or worse, the Earth-shaking movements of 2011 are finally realized in the politics and societies of the Middle East.

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