Everything you have told me is true (book review)
I immensely enjoyed Mary Harper’s Everything you have told me is true- The Many Faces of Al Shabaab , even th ough her book covers difficult topics around Somalia’s troubled governance and Al Shabaab, an entity many would easily label a ‘terrorist organization’. Mary Harper is the BBC Africa editor and has reported on Africa and its conflict zones for 25 years and her biggest achievement with this book is her nuanced, careful, critical and ultimately empathetic engagement with Somalia and her citizens. Her book is not about a ‘failed state’ that has been captured by a terrorist group, but about the fact that Many people have multiple identities, one of which is some kind of association with Al Shabaab, sometimes voluntary, sometimes pragmatic, sometimes forced (p.5). This may not be an entirely surprising insight for academic researchers engaging in qualitative or ethnographic field work or journalists with in-depth knowledge of the area. At the same time it is a reminder of h