For Saudis, the War Brings Mixed Feelings, Painful Questions on Role : Debate: They dislike Hussein’s actions, but they also are alarmed at the prospect of Iraq’s devastation.

Lots of people don’t sleep in Al Khubar anymore, at least not at night. Since the missiles started swooping in on the night air out of Iraq, a wealthy banker in this comfortable community wedged on the Persian Gulf has taken to hosting his friends at lavish 3 a.m. banquets.

Chicken and rice, salads and lamb, stuffed eggplant. The table seats 20, and when the air raid sirens start, the chatter gets a little more lively.

Adnan, the banker, admits it’s not the best way to approach a war. But then Saudis, he notes, don’t have much experience with war. As the conflict with Iraq enters its third week, a lot of Saudis are having difficulty deciding exactly how to think about this war--and having grave second thoughts about being the theater in which one of the first inter-Arab military conflicts in modern history is staged.

When a Scud missile explodes in a neighborhood of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, hundreds gather to gape at the damage. It goes beyond people’s usual fascination with scenes of disaster: Rich, isolated Saudi Arabia is a nation that is seeing the signs of war on its own soil for the first time since it declared nationhood in 1932.

Saudis also now describe the pain they have felt at watching U.S. bombs rain down on Baghdad, the capital of the aggressor nation to the north, and some have bitterly begun to ask whether they will be the ones left paying the tab for reconstruction when the devastation ends.

Why, some of them ask, will Israel once again be left the unchallenged power in the Middle East? Should the allies have given economic sanctions more time to work? Why, in a sheltered desert kingdom where billions of petrodollars had always bought peace with its neighbors, is the sky raining Scud missiles?

Although Saudi Arabia’s support for the coalition operation remains firm--King Fahd reiterated his demand for an unconditional Iraqi withdrawal from Kuwait only this week--questions like these are nonetheless beginning to surface despite all the tough, anti-Saddam Hussein talk that has come out of the kingdom for months.

“It’s OK to talk when you don’t have to go through Customs,” explained Adnan, who did not want his full name used. “But when you have to pay duty, you start thinking about what’s in your bag.”

Some analysts say these early doubts could spell trouble later if the war with Iraq becomes a drawn-out, bloody conflict. Doubts from religious conservatives about the presence of U.S. troops in the kingdom that have plagued the military buildup since August could become even more formidable if they become joined with the voice of Western-educated liberals who until now have supported the alliance with the West--making a speedy conclusion to the conflict more imperative than ever.

At the same time, a large number of Saudis have for months been stung by Iraq’s invasion of a neighboring oil emirate and subsequent threat against Saudi Arabia’s own border--and have been doubly repelled in recent weeks by Iraq’s attacks on the region’s lifeblood, the oil facilities and waters of the Persian Gulf.

At the weekly camel market in Hofuf on Thursday, Bedouins from the eastern Saudi desert gathered with local tradesmen looking for camel meat and racing camels, and the talk turned inevitably to war.

“Really, the Iraqis are Arabic, same as us. And it is shame for one Arab to kill another,” said Ahmed Salim, 32. “But what can we do? We want to save our country, and we want to save Kuwait. They are our brothers, too. Really, we feel angry about the Iraqis, because we helped them for about 10 years to fight Iran. As we heard, we gave them about $25 billion. And now this.”

Rashid Hajry, a 60-year-old herdsman, drew a long, gnarled finger across his throat. “Saddam deserves to be killed, not only taught a lesson,” he said. “The war will change life. Some people will be killed in the war. But we will go on.”

It is among the country’s liberal, Western-educated elite that some of the most dramatic shifts in perception have occurred. Before, some supported the idea of going to war, some didn’t, but most seemed to agree with the direction in which the U.N. resolutions were moving.

For some, that began to change in the early hours of Jan. 17, when, equipped with Cable News Network for the first time throughout the kingdom, they watched the sky light up over Baghdad and heard the wailing of air raid sirens. Then came the daily reports of thunderous allied air attacks on Iraq’s elite Republican Guard--the army that had stood between the Arabs and their enemies in Iran for the past decade.

They heard Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, refer to the same army with the directive, “First you cut it off, then you kill it.”

“People were sick when they heard that,” said a Saudi newspaper editor. “Really, I’ve changed. A lot of people have changed. Honest to God, we are upset. The Saudis now are saying this is not a battle for the liberation of Kuwait, but for the destruction of Iraq. Everybody now feels the Americans are here to destroy an Arab power so the supremacy will be given to Israel.

“I know Saddam is evil,” he said, “but believe me, a lot of people are saying the Americans are more evil.”

In Saudi Arabia, where understatement, politeness and good form are celebrated above most other virtues, some have been appalled at the images of American servicemen writing lurid messages on the weapons they dispatch to Baghdad, scrawled with inscriptions like “Up Yours, Saddam.”

“One of them said, ‘Kill an Iraqi. Make My Day,’ ” related one businessman in Dhahran. “They’re writing it on these bombs, and we’re seeing it on CNN, and we think, ‘What do you mean, kill an Iraqi?’ ”

Some Saudis are left with the nagging feeling that they are being used by the Americans in a game they are ill-equipped to play.

From the beginning of the crisis in August, talk in Saudi dinner party circles, even among the educated elite, often revolved around rumors that the Americans had encouraged Iraq to invade Kuwait in order to be called to the Gulf and to establish a permanent military presence here. Large numbers of highly placed Saudis, including a senior Foreign Ministry official, seemed to give credence to at least parts of the reports and usually confided their own confirming details.

Now, some of these same Saudis complain that Saudi Arabia is being asked to pay a huge share of the military bill at a time when Israel is moving forward to seek even more U.S. aid.

“People know the Americans are milking us,” said a Jidda businessman. After the war, he said, when Iraq will have to be rebuilt, “Who is going to foot the bill for this? Again the Saudis?”

Talks with Western diplomats and knowledgeable Saudi officials yield the perception that the Saudis, after decades of using their oil money to become the power brokers of the Middle East, now intend to be more judicious as to how they spend their money on Arab neighbors.

“There will be no more open-checkbook diplomacy,” said one Western diplomat. “Money will not be given to rulers, but rather to projects. There is going to be a lot more conditionality on Saudi aid programs.”

One of the roots of the change, said one diplomat, is that the concept of pan-Arab unity, long a goal in the region since the days of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, has fallen from favor. Most now realize that the Arab world is too diverse to hold together under one banner. And the attack by Iraq ended any pretense at Arab harmony.

“What Saddam did was destroy the rules of the Arab world,” he said. “I don’t think there is an Arab world anymore. The sense of comity, mutual deference, the search for the lowest common denominator has disappeared and unlikely to be resurrected. Saudi leaders don’t give a fig for the opinions of some leaders in other parts of the Arab world.”

Despite the doubts of some of his subjects as to the wisdom of the war effort, King Fahd appears to remain solidly behind the coalition effort, and a large number of Saudis still support the view that Saddam Hussein must be dispensed with if the Gulf is ever to live in peace--even if it takes a war to do it.

“It’s like when you break up with somebody, you have to make that decision. It’s emotional at the beginning, it’s heartbreaking, but in the end, you’re going to have to do it,” said Waleed Banawi, a young Jidda industrialist.

“This war has an object, and I don’t think it’s over yet,” he said. “The Iraqis still have those capabilities, and as long as he’s still shelling and fighting, that means the object is not over. . . . If you’re really thinking long-term, if you’re thinking about deterring violence and preventing countries from interfering in others, then one really has to have a seriousness in all of this.”

The owner of a printing company in Al Khubar said it is too late for the Saudis to start having second thoughts about war.

“People want it to be over with. I mean, finish it, one way or another. If there is a way to do it peacefully, which most people doubt, then do it. But otherwise, go to the extent.”

Where anti-American sentiments are likely to come into play, one Eastern Province businessman said, is after the war. When it is finished, he said, Arabs will be expecting the Americans to have some plan for putting together again what has been taken apart--for rebuilding Iraq and Kuwait, for making sure there is a stable government and viable education programs for young Iraqis--for making sure they were right when they told the Arabs that Saddam Hussein was not the hero so much of the Arab world had been waiting for.

“Last night, I was with about 10 or 15 people, and we started talking about anti-American things,” he said. “It’s that the situation is so frustrated, that’s all.

“After the war, we have to prepare about four to five packages and deals, and if they start changing the shape of the area, then people will start forgetting about Saddam,” he said. “But if your people go back and the Palestinian problem stays and Iraq is destroyed and Kuwait is an empty island and we pay so much money and no result, then I can assure you, this is a problem. If there is no payment back, then Americans will lose for 100 years, believe me.

“You kill an evil, you get him out, you tell me he has to go, OK. But after that, you have to show me that you are good.”

Times staff writer J. Michael Kennedy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this article.