Armenians in Kuwait British mandate then. In August 1990, Iraq declared war on Kuwait and invaded its tiny neighbour. During this time, many Kuwaiti-Armenians left for neighbouring Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon and the Persian Gulf. Other Armenians fled to Baghdad by car, from where they fled to Syria. The remaining Armenians were mostly workers with no way of escaping. During the invasion, the Armenian school and church were shut down and guarded in order to stop looters from attacking the institutions. The Armenian institutions remained unscathed during the war. After the Iraqis were driven out of Kuwait by the coalition forces,
Republic of Kuwait decided to appeal to kinsfolk in Iraq, led by the knight of Arabs and the leader of their march, President Field Marshal Saddam Hussein, to agree that their sons should return to their large family, that Kuwait should return to the great Iraq—the mother homeland—and to achieve complete merger unity between Kuwait and Iraq." Hussein Ali was then made Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq while Ali Hassan al-Majid was proclaimed Governor. The Turkish daily "Milliyet" reported Hussein in September 1990 saying to Bülent Ecevit that, "Kuwait is now ours, but we might have refrained from taking such a decision if