Arab Spring Progress Check

On March 2nd, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was acquitted on charges of killing protesters during the 18-day uprising that ended his rule, during which estimates claim nearly 900 people were killed and around 6,000 were injured. The decision was made in the Court of Cassation, Egypt’s highest court of criminal litigation, and as such, their decision is final. Egypt’s former dictator of 30 years is free to go, however, its most recently deposed president, Mohammed Morsi, had his sentence for killing protesters finalized to 20 years by the Court of Cassation in the middle of 2016. Although there may be distinct differences in Mubarak’s and Morsi’s cases, the disparity in sentences poses the question: After all the political turmoil and uprisings, did the Arab Spring bring any positive change to the affected Arab countries? Or are corruption and restrictions even more common place today than they were in December 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi set the Middle East ablaze with his self-immolation?

To decipher whether the Arab Spring has progressed the region forward or pulled it backward, it will be important to take a closer look at five countries where regime change has occurred or has been attempted. As economic restrictions ignited the Arab Spring, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, and Syria will be taken into account, utilizing the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom to investigate if the uprisings have met their goals. The pre-revolution rankings are included in the chart above, while the 2017 rankings can be found here.      

Egypt has endured much instability since the revolution against Mubarak’s rule in 2011.  On June 17th, 2012 Mohammed Morsi became the country’s first democratically elected president, however, he rarely acted very democratically. Less than half a year into his presidency, he granted himself sweeping authority and judicial immunity for his actions. The Egyptian people weren’t ready for another Mubarak and revolted against his power-grab and broken promises.  On June 3rd, 2013, the military, commanded by Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, removed President Morsi from power and placed him under house arrest. Al-Sisi left the Egyptian military to run for the presidency and was elected on May 28th, 2014. Since then, there has been a bevy of human rights abuses and restrictions of freedoms. Journalists that criticize the government are jailed, anti-government protests are banned, and detainees are typically tortured. Egypt’s economic freedom score has dropped significantly from the 85th most free to the 144th most free.  In response to criticism of its human rights record, the Sisi administration frequently refers to the mantra: “Security before perfection”.  Protection from terrorism is understandably a priority, but an administration dedicated to human rights wouldn’t be utilizing such a phrase.

Libya is venturing into the dangerous waters of failed-statehood. Muammar Gaddafi ruled by exacerbating rivalries and with an iron fist. After the Libyan leader’s death, a power vacuum emerged, intensifying tensions between the rivalries he cultivated and resulting in multiple entities claiming to be the rightful government. As such, a country who led all African nations in GDP per capita and produced 1.6 million barrels of oil per day in 2009 has fallen into a civil war with three different governments and ISIS all vying for power. Libya was ranked 154th in the world in the Index of Economic Freedom prior to Gaddafi’s assassination, and is now unranked because of the governmental uncertainty and raging civil war.

Tunisia is considered the success story of the Arab Spring, but even they have had their challenges. After the Arab Spring began here in late 2010, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in January 2011, leading to a tumultuous year until elections were held in October of 2011. Though it has become largely democratic, problems persist.  Mohamed Bouazizi protested through self-immolation due to lack of economic freedoms, yet Tunisia’s economic freedom ranking has dropped from 84th in the world to 123rd, university graduates constitute nearly a third of the unemployment rate, and terrorism continues to hurt the country’s main industry of tourism. While the government has made a transition to a democratic system, lack of security and bleak employment prospects have led to Tunisia becoming a fertile recruiting ground for ISIS. In October of 2015, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet won the Nobel Peace Prize for its “decisive contribution to building a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia, in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution in 2011”, and progress has been made towards the goal of becoming a democratic state. However, unemployment and lack of security continue to hold the nation back.    

Yemen is struggling through a civil war and divided country similar to that of the Libyan situation. After President Ali Abdullah Saleh resigned and transferred power to Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, the Yemeni regime has struggled with dissent from Houthi rebels, Al-Qaeda, and small pockets of ISIS. Yemeni territory is essentially divided into three parts between the Yemeni government, Al-Qaeda, and the Houthis. Making the conflict even more complex, the Yemeni Civil War has become a proxy war between Saudi Arabia supporting the Sunni government and Iran supporting the Shia Houthi rebels. In addition, the country is suffering a humanitarian crisis of malnutrition and lack of drinkable water.  Unfortunately, this is another example of a country that is trending backwards. Prior to the Arab Spring, Yemen ranked 125th in the world in economic freedom and is now unranked as a failed state. 

Syria is in the middle of a civil war that dwarfs the Lebanese Civil War in both casualties and intricacies.  In 2011, after President Bashar Al-Assad’s forces violently repressed protests, the protests grew in ferocity and soldiers defected from his army to bring about the main opposition force: The Free Syrian Army.  However, the Free Syrian Army was joined by other groups, like Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Al-Nusra Front), ISIS, and American-backed Kurdish forces. These anti-regime forces are all fighting against Assad, but he has held his ground and fought for six years.  The Syrian conflict has become a proxy war with the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia supporting anti-regime rebels, while Iran and Russia support the Assad regime. With so many political actors in this conflict, should the Assad regime fall, Syria will be in for a dangerous power vacuum. Needless to say, economic freedoms are not of priority right now in Syria, and, as such, the country fell from 144th in the world to an unranked failed state in the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedoms.

Looking back on each of these nations, it is difficult to be optimistic about where the Middle East is heading. Prior to the Arab Spring, each of the nations analyzed were ranked in Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Six years of turmoil later, only two of the five nations are still ranked, in the index with Egypt dropping a dramatic 29 ranking spots and Tunisia dropping 14 spots respective of their 2011 economic freedom rankings.  Tunisia has reached its democratic goal but has dipped in security, Egypt has increased its security while dropping the ball on human rights and democracy, and Libya, Yemen, and Syria are all engulfed in civil wars. It is possible these countries’ respective progresses are being analyzed too soon. Libya, Yemen, and Syria could be envisioned as failed states, or envisioned as territories in progress of the democratic goals their citizens fought so hard for. Whichever perspective is taken, it is undeniable that the Middle East is a region in disarray. We are six years into the Arab Spring experiment and so far it doesn’t look promising.   

- Omar Naguib

Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt: Women’s Undue Burden

Women’s health clinics are the new battleground for abortion rights. Forty-three years after abortions were legalized in the case of Roe v. Wade (1973), states cannot make abortions illegal, but they are doing their best to stop women from having access to medical information about abortions and abortions clinics. “Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers” (TRAP) laws attempt to dissuade women from getting abortions by requiring women to make multiple visits to clinics, view an ultrasound of the fetus before making a decision, or receive medically incorrect information from a physician, such as the fact that abortions can cause breast cancer.

For the sake of women’s health, TRAP laws need to be eradicated immediately. As a result of these laws, there has already been a rise of unsafe self-induced abortions. These thinly veiled attempts at preventing women from having access to health care providers, which offer abortion services, are already having a devastating effect on the community. Not only are women resorting to unsafe methods of aborting unwanted pregnancies, they are also losing access to cervical cancer screenings, STD and STI testing, pregnancy tests, and other services provided by organizations like Planned Parenthood.

This is bigger than just abortion. Legislators implement laws like the Texas House Bill 2, also known as the HB2 , under the pretense of protecting women’s health, when they are doing nothing more than trying to undermine a woman’s right to choose. HB2 made it to the Supreme Court in the Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt case, in which Whole Woman’s Health, a women’s healthcare provider, is disputing the claims of  John Hellerstedt, the Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. Hellerstedt claims that HB2 protects women from unsafe clinics. Whole Women’s Health argues that HB2 is actually just another way to prevent women from having access to abortion services.

Let’s take a look at the bill.

The HB2 law requires abortion clinics to meet the same specific requirements that ambulatory surgical centers do; for example, clinics need to construct hallways wide enough for two gurneys to pass each other, have a minimum number of janitorial closets, and be within a 30 miles of a hospital.

On the surface, the bill looks like a concerted effort to ensure that women who have complications with an abortion can get appropriate medical care. That is, it looks sincere until you realize that these requirements shutdown 18 of the 41 Texas abortion clinics in 2013, and, if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Hellerstedt, there will only be 12 abortion clinics left in Texas. How is this protecting women’s health if it prevents women from getting health care in the first place? This directly contradicts the “undue burden” standard of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which prevents states from placing an undue burden on women who seek abortions by restricting their access to clinics. States can promote a pro-life stance, but ultimately they must offer abortion services; the HB2 law restricts thousands of women’s access to abortion by forcing women who live in rural areas-- and are often lower income than those in cities-- to travel hundreds of miles to the nearest clinic.

Supporters of the HB2 law argue that the laws protect women from unsafe procedures and bring up the case of Kermit Gosnell, a Pennsylvania physician who ran an unclean clinic and performed illegal late-term abortions for low income and minority women. What HB2 supporters fail to mention is that Gosnell’s clinic had not been inspected in almost 16 years. His grotesque clinic is not representative of abortion clinics, and shutting down safe clinics will actually lead to women seeking unsafe abortions from people like Gosnell out of desperation. 

It is true, all surgeries have complication risks, but not all surgeries have the same levels of risk. The HB2 law relies on people believing the myth that abortions are high-risk or dangerous, but in reality, abortions are extremely safe procedures; in fact, abortions are safer than colonoscopies or the procedure for removing wisdom teeth. It is nine times safer for a woman to get an abortion, whether it is a medical abortion or a surgical abortion, than to carry a pregnancy to term. Furthermore, nearly 90% of all abortions happen within the first 16 weeks of the pregnancy, and over half of all abortions take place during the first eight weeks, where there is no need for a surgical procedure. Justice Ginsburg questioned the necessity of having a surgical center at the abortion clinic: “[W]hat is the benefit of having an ambulatory surgical center to take two pills when there's no-- no surgical procedure at all involved?” The answer: there isn’t one. As she later pointed out, complications with a medical abortion do not happen in the actual clinics; women would experience complications later in the home. There are no advantages in requiring that clinics be within 30 miles of a hospital.

This case sets a precedent for the other 44 states, which are also implementing TRAP laws. If the court decides that the HB2 law is constitutional, more states will follow Texas’ example and impose these strict regulations. As a result, we will see the return of self-induced abortions and a decline in access to women’s health care in general. No matter how you look at it, it is clear that the HB2 law and all other TRAP laws need to go for the sake of women’s health.

- Jessica Steele