The messages are sinister and unnervingly accurate. It is as if an unseen stalker constantly shadows Mary Harper, noting every move she makes — even when she believes she could not possibly be observed — and reporting back to her on the minutiae of her life.
‘You went into a shop on the ground floor of a multi-storey building,’ the now familiar voice on the phone tells her. ‘When you came out, you were holding a tube of Pringles crisps. Then you walked to the bank next door, but it was shut. You knocked on the doors and tried to open them. Your bodyguards were not at all professional. They were wandering about, chatting with their guns slung around their shoulders, instead of keeping watch over you.’
The man, whose voice is soft and quietly assured, goes on to tell her that earlier that day she’d been to a school where the girls wore yellow uniforms.
As Africa Editor for the BBC World Service, Mary, 53, mother to a grown-up son and daughter, has been reporting from Somalia — one of the most dangerous places in the world to work as a journalist — for 25 years.
Mary Harper pictured above wearing a headscarf whilst being accompanying by two Somali soldiers
A member of Somalia's al Shabaab militant group sits during a public demonstration to announce their integration with al Qaeda in 2012. An al Shabaab media man continues to call Mary on the phone both abroad and in the UK
Mary Harper spends about a third of the year in Africa and the rest at her UK home (pictured left and right at home in London
She is familiar with the voice and its inflections; sometimes sharp and staccato, sometimes wheedling; apparently even concerned.
It belongs to a media contact in the violent Islamist insurgent group Al Shabaab who calls her regularly to inform her of its atrocities. And to remind her that it knows precisely where she is and what she is doing.
In Somalia, where the group controls vast swathes of the country, Al Shabaab is responsible for many thousands of violent deaths. It has attracted recruits from all over the world who are prepared to fight for it.
To the outside world it is known for its most despicable acts of mass violence — the shooting at the upmarket Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in 2013 in which 71 died, the attack on Garissa University College in Kenya in 2015 which killed 147; the devastating truck bombing in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, in October 2017, in which up to 1,000 people lost their lives, one of the worst terror attacks ever to hit the African continent.
People in Kenya protest after gunmen attacked the town of Mpeketoni in 2014, which al Shabaab claimed responsibility for
Al Shabaab has threatened to attack targets in the UK, the U.S. and France, and arguably as IS loses power, its influence will increase. Its aim is to overthrow the Somali government and set up an Islamic state in the country based on Sharia law, but there are more ambitious members who want to spread its caliphate across the world.
Mary Harper (pictured above) has penned a book titled 'Everything You Have Told Me Is True', which is out later this month
Its ruthlessly efficient intelligence arm has spies everywhere: ‘Cooks, soldiers, mechanics, cleaners, civil servants and street children can all be the eyes and ears of Al Shabaab,’ says Mary. ‘Some sympathise with the movement, while others are so terrified of it that they dare not refuse to carry out its demands.
‘Al Shabaab is not a black-and-white phenomenon. Of course there are those who embrace it entirely and those who reject it. But there is a large grey area in between and plenty of blurred lines.’
The media man, its conduit for channelling information to Mary, tells her in impeccable English — he has learnt it from listening to the BBC — every move she has made during a visit to Baidoa in south-west Somalia.
‘I feel sick to my stomach,’ she explains, ‘because I try to be extremely discreet when I visit Somalia. I tell as few people as possible that I am coming to the country and switch off all my social media accounts when I am there.
‘I change my local phone number regularly and use secure messaging apps whenever I can. Meetings are arranged at the last minute, with times and locations often changed. I do not talk openly about my internal travel plans, only sharing them with my two trusted security advisers. How could Al Shabaab know all these details?’
‘We have been monitoring you wherever you go,’ the voice tells her. ‘We have people in the government, the security forces, NGOs, and the media who tell us everything.’
He goes on to talk about the people she has met in Mogadishu. He gets it right every time. She says, ‘It makes me think of a phrase I hear so often from Somalis: “Al Shabaab is everywhere and you never know who is Al Shabaab.” ’
Mary boarded at Bedales School (library pictured above) before going on to University
Al Shabaab have Mary’s British phone number and when she flies to London — she spends about a third of the year in Africa and the rest in the UK — she ‘almost invariably’ receives a call as she is collecting her luggage or in a cab back home.
‘I am asked about my trip, what the weather is like in the UK, and given a blow-by-blow account of what I got up to in Somalia. They must have someone in the airport telling them I’ve got on the plane, which unnerves me.’
The calls have come regularly over the past two years; almost all from the same man. ‘When he is telling me about Al Shabaab atrocities his voice is staccato, as if he is reciting by rote.
