Yemen, the scene of the first attacks by al-Qaida on the United States, is re-e merging as the terrorist group's operational hub in the Arabian Peninsula region.

On Thursday, government forces backed by warplanes killed more than 30 al-Qaida militants in attacks on camps and training centres in both the south and the north of the country.

The government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh is being leaned on to take action against terrorists by Washington and neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who are increasingly anxious that Yemen is becoming an al-Qaida centre for destabilizing the region.

The movement of al-Qaida militants to Yemen comes as the group's bases in the lawless border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan are under increasing pressure from both the NATO and Pakistani militaries, and assassination attacks from United States missile-equipped drone aircraft.

But the country, slightly smaller than Alberta and with 23 million people, is both a natural bolt hole for al-Qaida and also a logical base for its Arabian Peninsula operations.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is of Yemeni ancestry and he still has many family bonds within the country.

And, like the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, Yemen is a largely lawless country of mountains and deserts where the government has little authority outside the capital, Sana'a.

Yemen is also riven by violent internal disputes that create a climate of chaos in which al-Qaida can always find support and protection.

Yemen was created in 1990 by unifying the old British colony of South Yemen with the remnants of an outpost of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the north.

But many southerners resent the amalgamation, and there is an active militant separatist campaign.

In the north, meanwhile, are communities of Muslims of the Shi'ite sect, who resent rule -- and often discrimination -- by the Sunni Muslim majority and are in a near constant state of revolt.

The first al-Qaida action against the U.S. was a bomb attack on American troops in a hotel in Yemen's port city of Aden in 1992.

In 2000, a suicide bomber in a speed boat struck the USS Cole in Aden harbour.

As a result, Saleh's government, with the close cooperation of Washington, attacked and defeated al-Qaida in Yemen by 2003. At the same time, counterinsurgency forces in Saudi Arabia -- bin Laden's adopted home -- had crushed al-Qaida by 2006.

But bin Laden says his fundamental aim remains to liberate Saudi Arabia from the House of Saud, remove foreign influences from the sacred Islamic soil of Saudi Arabia, and bring it and neighbouring countries under regimes of pure and puritanical Muslim law.

That was the message put out by al-Qaida's religious leader, Ibrahim al-Rubaish, in a video tape in August.

He called for a new campaign to assassinate members of the Saudi royal family; the tape was distributed just after a failed attempt to murder Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the head of Saudi Arabia's counterinsurgency forces that eliminated the local al-Qaida organization in 2006.

The suicide bomber came from Yemen and was killed when he detonated the explosives prematurely. The prince suffered only minor injuries.

But the attack was the first on a Saudi royal in many years, and many security officials both in the Gulf and in Washington saw it as a warning of increasing instability in the world's most important oil-exporting region.

In all this there are some real questions about whose side Saleh is really on.

That may be why on Monday the Saudi air force bombed the Yemeni village of Bani Maan and reportedly killed about 70 people.

The Riyadh government accuses the Saleh administration of supporting the Houthis Shi'ite rebels in raids across the border into Saudi Arabia.

Others accuse Saleh of having a far more direct relationship with al-Qaida and of using bin Laden's fighters against Yemeni separatists in the south.

What is known for sure is that in January Saleh struck a deal with al-Qaida's No. 2 man, Ayman Zawahiri, under which nearly 200 of the terror groups members were released from prison.

In return Zawahiri agreed not to launch attacks in Yemen.

jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com