60-80% of Kuwait's Bedoon are Shia Muslims. Many Bedoon in Kuwait are pressured to hide their Shia Muslim background. The Bedoon issue in Kuwait “overlaps with historic sensitivities about Iraqi influence inside Kuwait; many who continue to be denied Kuwaiti nationality are believed to have originated from Iraq”. The stateless Bedoon are generally categorized into three groups: stateless tribespeople, stateless police/military, and the stateless children of Kuwaiti women who married Bedoon men. The stateless Bedoon constituted 80-90% of the Kuwaiti Army in the 1970s and 1980s up until the 1990 Gulf War. At the time, Kuwaiti government preferred to identify these stateless people as "Bedoon".