Oil was discovered in Syrian Kurdistan in the 1960s. At the same time, events in Iraqi Kurdistan meant that the lives of the Kurdish population Syria became much worse. In August 1961, the Syrian government ordered a special census of al-Jazira Province in November that year. By the time the census was done, the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan had risen up to claim self-rule. The census took away Syrian citizenship and civil rights from about 120,000 Kurds in al-Jazira Province. The government decree ("order") in August 1961 said that Kurds were "illegally infiltrating" from Turkish Kurdistan into Syria, in order to "destroy its Arab character". The Kurdish lands in the Kurd Mountains were not changed by this census, and Kurdish people there kept their citizenship and were not made stateless.