Saudi Arabia

When the firing was over, the life-size, gray-green silhouettes of human torsos lined up at a Fort Meade firing range were thoroughly riddled -- more so than in previous target practices, some soldiers said, because their new weapons were lighter and more accurate.The 209th Military Police Company, an active duty unit at Fort Meade, began a qualifying test yesterday to use the new 9-millimeter Beretta semi-automatic pistol before shipping out soon, at some undisclosed date, to Saudi Arabia.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- This capital city, which many retreating Saudi civilians saw as a safe haven at the start of the Persian Gulf war, came under Iraqi missile fire for the first time early today, terrifying hundreds of thousands.Witnesses said they saw at least two of the missiles strike in the northeastern part of the capital. A Saudi government official, who denied that there were any strikes, acknowledged that some windows in the area may have broken, perhaps by falling debris.Only hours after wailing sirens gave the city its first real taste of the five-day war, the wailing resumed, this time accompanied by the blunt thump of rocket launches and shoot-downs.

WASHINGTON -- A memo from: President Bush To: Sheik Saleh al-Sheikh, Saudi Arabia's minister of Islamic affairs Dear Minister: I'm sure you find it unusual to be receiving a letter from me. In the past, U.S. presidents have been interested in writing only the Saudi oil minister, because we just looked on Saudi Arabia as a big gas station to be pumped and defended but never to be taken seriously as a society. But we've learned from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 that you are the minister we need to talk with, because, sadly, 15 young Saudis were involved in these attacks -- or, to put it another way, 15 recent graduates of your schools and religion classes.

Washington -- Time: the second week in October.Scene: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The house of a very old, very wise man. Or at least he is certainly very old and we have been told that he is very wise. We must take it on faith, since he speaks no English, but he certainly looks the part: gaunt, bearded, dressed in the traditional thobe. He sits in a circle of sons and acolytes, plus a small group of visiting Americans. Tiny cups of Arabic coffee are served, followed by tiny glasses of sweetened tea, followed by water and fruit juice, followed by an elaborate meal.

The Christmas decorations are still up at the yellow-and-brown houseon Chalice Road near Fort Meade. Inside, the place settings for a full-course meal remain on the dining room table -- exactly where Army Sgt. Marsha Robinson, 32, left them before heading for Saudi Arabia.Her husband, William Robinson, and three sons spend most of their time in the family room downstairs, leaving hints of her orderly lifestyle intact as a reminder of the feminine presence missing from the tidy, two-story home.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia By calling on foreign troops to defend it against Iraq, Saudi Arabia has inadvertently raised unwelcomed questions at home about how the country could spend billions of dollars buying arms but remain incapable of defending itself.The arrival of the foreign forces, including more than 260,000 Americans, has encouraged citizens to question the wisdom of the kingdom's enormous defense expenditures. It also has highlighted the government's insecurities about its own army, a force the regime has purposely kept small to ensure that it did not challenge the monarchy.

CAIRO, Egypt -- In a sharply worded report, Amnesty International accused Saudi Arabia yesterday of widespread human rights abuses, including arbitrary arrests, the torture of detainees and the barring of prisoners' access to family members or lawyers. The group said it had received and published graphic accounts of mistreatment, discrimination against religious minorities and suppression of political dissent in the gulf kingdom for years. But Saudi Arabia has escaped international condemnation for its record, Amnesty International officials said, because oil-dependent nations such as the United States have not wanted to offend the kingdom's rulers.

CAIRO, Egypt - A British defense worker was shot and killed yesterday in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, in the latest of a series of attacks on Westerners in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. The man, an employee of the British defense firm BAE Systems, died after a gunman opened fire at 4:45 p.m. as the victim waited in his car at a traffic light in the capital's Grenada neighborhood. The police chased and quickly arrested a man, identified as Saud bin Ali bin Nasser, according to the official Saudi Press Agency, which cited Ministry of Interior officials.

PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan is calling for a quick windup to bombing in Afghanistan and for a strategy to prevent anarchy and atrocity. Saudi Arabian leaders call for a quick end to bombing that punishes civilians. And these are our allies in the effort to fight terrorism by extinguishing the al-Qaida network and deposing the Taliban government harboring it. It's not surprising. Each country has a complex, layered, ambivalent connection to the enemy. The Sept. 11 terrorists were mostly Saudis, albeit revolutionaries against their rulers.

THE POWERFUL explosions at a U.S.-run military training center in Riyadh that claimed dozens of casualties, including six Americans killed, is a reminder that Saudi Arabia is a pressure cooker trying to contain both religious extremists and modernizers within an absolute monarchy started by the Al-Saud family around the turn of the century and consolidated in 1932. If that vessel were to shatter, the explosion could touch a region that stretches from Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan to Yemen, Oman, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.