Kim Sengupta: Intervention in Yemen has come too late to halt slide to extremism

Analysis: While the "War on Terror" focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, countries such as Yemen became bases for international jihad

The suicide bomb attack on the British ambassador's convoy in Yemen should not come as a surprise in a land of endemic violence which has provided a fertile breeding ground for Islamist militancy.

Al-Qa'ida now has a firm presence in the country thanks, partly at least, to the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh doing little to combat the influence and recruitment drives of Sunni extremists.

Yemen, an impoverished country where guns outnumber people, more than 50 per cent of whom are unemployed, has become an amphitheatre for the sectarian struggle between Shias and Sunnis. The Yemeni government has blamed the Iranians and even Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Iraqi cleric, for helping the Shia rebels.

Shia tribesmen in turn have accused the Saudis of carrying out regular air attacks, with the authorities conniving by turning a blind eye to the violation of the country's airspace.

The West has shown only a periodic interest in Yemen, usually following insurgent attacks such as the one on the American warship USS Cole. While the "War on Terror" focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, countries such as Yemen and those on the Horn of Africa became bases for international jihad.

But it was the arrival in Yemen of an American Muslim cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, and what subsequently transpired that has led to renewed US interest in the country.

Mr Awlaki became the spiritual guide to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian-born student who attempted to blow up an aircraft on Christmas Day, and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army medic who shot dead 13 people at a military base in Texas last November.

Intelligence and special forces personnel were subsequently moved from the US-run Horn of Africa Task Force based in Djibouti, to Yemen, and Washington amended laws to allow Mr Awlaki's assassination.

In an attempt to show that the problem was being viewed seriously, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced that a "Yemen conference" should be added to the London conference on Afghanistan and a contact group, Friends of Yemen, was established.

Both the Yemeni government and the US and UK have been claiming that the situation is getting better. However, as yesterday's attack shows, the years when the West did nothing to halt funding from Saudi Arabia for Wahaabi extremists has created a potent threat.