Nationality and Cases of Statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa Syrian nor any other nationality – and remains a significant challenge there today.74 In Iraq, a Decree passed in 1980 (No. 666) formed the legal basis through which the country’s own Arabisation efforts led to large-scale statelessness. This Decree led to the withdrawal of nationality from between 300,000 and 600,000 Feili Kurds and Arab shi’ites,75 many of whom were subsequently also forced to flee the country and lived for decades in exile in neighbouring Iran.76 Mauritania’s black population fell victim to that state’s assertion of its Arab identity as a response to ethnic conflict at the end of the 1980s. Some 75,000 Black Mauritanians were stripped of their nationality and expelled from the country in 1989-1990 and a further 15,000 nomadic Mauritanians outside the state’s territory at that time also came to have their nationality disputed.77 This situation is now also being 74 - See further chapter 3, as well as H. Montgomery, The Kurds of Syria. An existence denied, Europäisches Zentrum für Kurdische Studien [European Centre for Kurdish Studies], Berlin, 2005; Chatham House, The Syrian Kurds: A people discovered, Middle East Programme, January 2006; UK Home Office, Country of Origin Information Report – Syria, 10 October 2007; S. Kawakibi, Les Kurdes en Syrie our les Kurdes syriens? a report for the Euro-Mediterranean Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration, No. 12, 2009; and the separate report produced under this MENA Nationality and Statelessness Research Project, The Stateless Syrians, May 2013. 75 - UNHCR, The situation of stateless persons in the Middle East and North Africa, October 2010, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/4cea28072. html. 76 - Today, this nationality policy has been reversed and there is a concerted effort to ensure that those affected are able to reacquire Iraqi nationality. See further chapter 3. 77 - B. Manby, Struggles for citizenship in Africa, in particular chapter 4 on “Mass denationalisation and expulsion”, Zed Books, London, 2009; UNHCR, The situation of stateless persons in the Middle East and North Africa, October 2010. 64