IT WAS 20 years ago this week when they first etched their deadly and indelible stamp on the world. Two simultaneous attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania would leave 224 people dead and close to 5,000 injured.

But even worse was to follow. Three years after that carnage in Africa, they would go on to stage the September 11, 2001, attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died in the US.

Al-Qaeda had arrived.

Under its leadership of Osama bin Laden, it was both a force to be reckoned with and a byword for Islamist inspired terror.

These days, al-Qaeda might not be making the headlines they once did, but there is good reason why all that could be about to change.

Patiently rebuilding and reorganising after years in the shadow of its jihadist rivals the Islamic State (IS) group, a revived al-Qaeda is back as the world’s top terrorist threat.

With its resurrection too comes concern as to whether once again it might be preparing to embark on so-called “spectacular” attacks on Western targets.

Only this week, as the families of the victims and officials gathered in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam to remember that terrible day in Africa back on August 7, 1998, another al-Qaeda related story was also making the headlines.

Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, Osama bin Laden’s two half-brothers said that Hamza bin Laden, one of the sons of the former al-Qaeda leader, has reportedly married the daughter of the lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta.

The brothers also claimed the younger bin Laden had become a senior member of al-Qaeda and is intent on avenging his father’s death.

Hamza bin Laden is the son of Khairiah Sabar, one of Osama bin Laden’s three wives. She was living in the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan where US Special Forces killed the al-Qaeda leader in 2011.

It was some years before those events, back in 2005, that Hamza bin Laden – now thought to be in his late 20s – is said to have joined al-Qaeda’s ranks.

The Herald:

Though his precise whereabouts today are unknown, intelligence analysts believe he may be hiding in the remote tribal territories straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

As reports of his marriage surfaced this week coinciding with the 20th commemoration of the al-Qaeda Africa bombings, attention has again focused on the group’s renewed operational capacity and the younger bin Laden’s role in its ranks.

Currently, Hamza bin Laden is second only in the al-Qaeda leadership to his father’s former deputy and now chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, regarded by many as the man responsible for the group’s rebuilding over recent years.

Some have insisted al-Qaeda’s failure to launch any major attacks in the West since the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris in January 2015 indicates the group’s decline.

Others, though, point to another reason, saying this is a result of al-Zawahiri’s strategic decision to prohibit external operations in the West to enable al-Qaeda’s rebuilding without interference.

In doing so the al-Qaeda chief appears also to have allowed IS to bear the brunt of counter-terrorist operations while putting the al-Qaeda house in order. “I worry that al-Qaeda has taken advantage of the past three or four years to very quietly rebuild while IS has preoccupied our attention,”

was how analyst Bruce Hoffman, visiting Professor of Terrorism Studies at St Andrews University, summed up the current scenario.

But with the al-Qaeda house now in order, Hamza bin Laden has began to make his presence felt.

In recent months, he has released a series of messages upping his calls for attacks on Westerners and Western interests, particularly following US President Donald Trump’s naming of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Many interpret this as the younger bin Laden being positioned to spearhead an al-Qaeda comeback.

So concerned is Washington at the group’s resurgence and Hamza bin Laden’s growing influence, that it has assigned him the status of a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist”, placing him on a list that aims to limit his movements and access to finance.

But the younger bin Laden has no shortage of resources at his disposal, within al-Qaeda’s re-galvanised ranks.

According to analyst Bruce Hoffman, nearly seven years after the killing of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda is numerically larger and present in more countries than at any other time in its history.

It now has an estimated 40,000 fighters under arms, most in Syria, Somalia, Libya and Yemen but other regions too.

“From north-west Africa to South East Asia, al-Qaeda has been able to knit together a global movement of some two dozen local franchises,” says Professor Hoffman.

While local franchises are one thing, the big question remains whether the group has the capacity, global reach and desire to carry out major top down organised attacks on high-profile western targets along the lines of the devastating Africa bombings of 20 years ago and 9/11.

“No one has forgotten how 9/11 grabbed global attention. If al -Qaeda decides to target the ‘far enemy,’ the West – rather than Islamic opponents – it will be well placed,” warned journalist and al-Qaeda expert Jason Burke late last year.

While it might seem like only yesterday that al-Qaeda first made its bloody mark on the world, 2018, in fact, marks the 30th anniversary of its founding.

With the generational baton having been handed on from Osama bin Laden to his son the organisation could now well be ready to revisit its ambitious strategies and operations of the past.

According to Ali Soufan a Lebanese-American former FBI agent who was involved in a number of high-profile anti-terrorism cases and is author of a book on Hamza, the younger bin Laden was raised by al-Qaeda’s top leadership while his father was in hiding in Pakistan.

Osama Bin Laden is said to have asked his advisers to monitor his son’s performance, and the feedback he got was consistently positive as to his credentials as heir to the al-Qaeda throne.

“Osama bin Laden was thinking more and more, ‘This kid can be something’,”

was Soufan’s assessment of what the father thought of the son. Today, counter-terrorism officers across the world will be doing all they can to make sure otherwise.