Suzan El Tahhan Bidoons: A Statelessness Plight in Kuwait ‫مجلة الدراسات القانونية واالقتصادية‬ The political policy further affected the Kuwaiti government's attitude towards Bidoons. Authorities hardened restrictions and discrimination even more following the Iraqi invasion in 1990 and the ensuing war to liberate Kuwait. Before 1990, the official number of Bidoons residents in Kuwait was around 250,000. However, many Bidoons who fled the country during the war found themselves stranded outside of Kuwait. Most Bidoons could not escape to Saudi Arabia (as many Kuwaitis did) because they lacked passports; they could not enter the country, while Bidoons who fled from Kuwait to Iraq were not asked for any travel documents as the Iraqi government considered Kuwait to be its newly annexed "nineteenth province". When these Bidoons attempted to return to Kuwait following liberation, the government refused their entry at the Kuwaiti border. Thousands of Bidoons lived in refugee camps along the Iraq-Kuwait border for up to eight months following Kuwait's liberation from occupation.26 After the country's liberation from the Iraqi occupation in 1991, the government stepped up its efforts to strip the Bidoons of their rights. They were fired altogether from positions in the military along with the police, while only a tiny fraction was rehired. The dismissed population had to issue passports to collect their severance, whether Kuwaiti, foreign or simply leave the country to get one. Tens of thousands of Bidoons who had fled the country or were forced to leave subsequently were not allowed to return.27 In February and March 2011, Kuwaiti authorities showed the rest of its ugly face to Bidoons. As protesters swarmed through the streets of Cairo, Tunis, Libya, and Yemen, Kuwait's Bidoons also organized demonstrations in the primarilyBidoon’s neighborhoods of al-Ahmadi, Taima'a, as well as Sulaibiyya. where 26 Ibid P.14 Refugees International, Kuwait: State of Exclusion, 25 July 2007, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/47a6ee9bd.html [accessed 19 December 2015] 27 13