Yemen, Al Qaeda's new playground

Yemen, and Somalia, its terrible twin situated just across the Gulf of Aden, are a different matter altogether.

Both countries lack effective central government. Both, having suffered a long history of colonial intervention, are currently prey to warring factions that have no love of the west.

And both contain vast, so-called “ungoverned spaces” that offer ideal hideouts and training centres for “non-state actors”, the intelligence community’s polite euphemism for terrorists.

Large tracts of sparsely populated Yemen are, in effect, “no-go” areas for the forces of global counter-terrorism. These safe havens remain mostly out of sight and, despite a trailblazing CIA Predator drone attack against al-Qaida in 2002, mostly out of range.

In short, Yemen has become the international jihadi’s destination of choice from which to prepare, plot and launch future terror attacks.