TEHRAN Undoubtedly, the world entered 1999, with a big band with fireworks and celebrations everywhere. Most parts of Europe not only celebrated the new year, but they also celebrated monetary unification, making Europe the biggest economic power in the world. Therefore, according to the Europeans, 1998 could be called as the year of unity. In other parts of the world, however, things were very much different with crisis more than summing up the global situation in 1998.

Of the major events, we could name the East Asian economic meltdown, especially in growing economies such as South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia , Malaysia and even Japan. Other crises included the economic as well as political problems in Russia, India and Pakistan's nuclear proliferation, the deadlock in the so called Middle East Peace Process and Bill Clinton's personal scandals. To Muslims however, 1998, was probably the most devastating year in terms of attacks on Islam. From a Western point of view, the United States' and British missile attacks on Iraq, Israel's numerous assaults on Lebanon and the Palestinians, Washington's attack on Sudan and Afghanistan, Serbian massacres of Muslims in Kosovo, bloodshed in Kashmir, the quashing of Muslims in Chechnya, the Afghan crisis, massacres in Algeria, and Turkey's attacks on the country's Islamists can be considered as the worst events of 1998.

But according to more than a billion Muslims, these attacks are considered as major attacks on Islam as a whole. As the West justifies these attacks on Islam under the guise of terrorism, and fundamentalism and considers the two as major threats to its interests, the world Muslims must also treat these military, economic, political and cultural onslaughts as major and unified threats against Islam itself.

And due to their nationalistic and Imperialist ideals, the Western media and politicians however, cannot even contemplate the ramification of this onslaught. For millions of fasting Muslims however, this is nothing new. And why should these major attacks on Muslims, be considered as major events of 1998? Figures of the dead, the mamed and the injured, provide a real answer to these questions, however.

It is estimated that the number of Muslim casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Algeria, Palestine, Lebanon, Kosovo, Sudan, Turkey and Pakistan for the past 12 months, have exceeded two hundred thousand. Within the same period, more than three hundred thousand Muslims have been displaced and are now refugees, with billions of dollars worth of their belongings destroyed. Within the same period the number of Americans and British killed does not exceed 400.

Economic sanctions against Sudan and Iraq, within the past year, have had a devastating effect on the two countries' population. According to official statements by Dennis Holiday, the UN's deputy director and the head of the UN's humanitarian organization's group in Iraq, within the past seven years, more than 239,000 Iraqi children under the age of five have died, and the whole Iraqi population suffers different forms of ill health.

Holiday, a senior UN employee, is the first ever to resign from his post in protest to the U.S.'s and the UK's inhumane practices in Iraq. Not surprisingly, the news of his resignation was not reported by the Western press, with Washington Post printing an interview conducted with him six months ago, after the recent attacks on Iraq. In the above-mentioned interview, Holiday put the number of infant casualties in Iraq at 54,000 in 1998 alone, and told the paper that we knowingly kill these infants, because of the U.S. childish and imperialistic foreign policies.

The attacks on Khartoum, the Sudanese capital (whose population consists of 70% Muslims,) came while the Sudanese were celebrating commemorating the 100th anniversary of fighting British Imperialism. Also in 1998, many Muslim countries suffered massive economic losses. Many populous countries such as Nigeria and Algeria in Africa, and Iran , Saudi Arabia which rely on natural resources (oil), suffered dearly due to the heavy falls in the prices of oil.

This downturn in the prices, has however helped the U.S. and European economies' inflation problems, with the price of gasoline falling to the prices of thirty years ago. And in 1998, not only the borders of many Muslim countries were turned into major U.S. military barracks, but also these very same borders were used to launch attacks on the Muslim population.

There are currently more than 24,000 soldiers, 24 battleships and aircraft carriers, and 201 fighter bombers stationed in the Persian Gulf, making it the biggest U.S. military fort in the world. There are 37 U.S. fighter bombers in Kuwait, 45 in Saudi Arabia, 4 in Oman, and 25 in the Diego Garcia island. U.S. and British bombers are also stationed in Bahrain and Turkey. In a world, where Western institutions align their policies according to their political, economic, military and cultural interests, and unite themselves for the formation of so called Free Markets, Free Enterprises, Economic Privatization and Global Civil Societies, most Islamic governments have more than before distanced themselves from their masses and are still talking about their national interests without having the means to do so.

Other organizations such as Organization of the Islamic Conference have time and again proven their inability to either counter anti-Islamic rhetoric or their lack of unity to solve internal conflicts. And while national interests have lost their real meaning in the West, the same thing has not occurred within the Islamic world. In the Islamic countries national interests can only be justified in terms of a multinational Islamic society.

The West's and especially the U.S.'s major worry from the Islamic Revolution of Iran, would be the realization of a unified Islamic front which is willing and able to counter today's Imperialism and Global expansionism. Washington, London, Berlin and Brussels are not afraid of national Islamic governments. Their real worry is a unified expansionist Islamic front.