Deadly price of ticket from hell

Somalis and Ethiopians are willing to risk their lives at the hands of people smugglers for a chance at a new life without war or grinding poverty. Picture / Reuters

Somalis and Ethiopians are willing to risk their lives at the hands of people smugglers for a chance at a new life without war or grinding poverty. Picture / Reuters

The ferocious violence and anarchy in the Horn of Africa has kept both the scale of profits and misery in the human trafficking trade from Somalia hidden from outside eyes.

Now, say the United Nations and humanitarian agencies, the extent of people smuggling in the region rivals traditional routes into Europe from Africa via the Mediterranean, which has its own images of mass drownings.

But the body count in the route from Somalia to Yemen - which then leads on to the Middle East and Europe - is higher, and the deaths, even more shocking.

Every month, dozens of corpses are found in the Arabian Sea, often with gunshot wounds, often with hands tied behind their backs - victims of vicious traffickers who have jettisoned their cargo in the most final way.

The question of illegal migration and asylum seekers is a hot topic in the West with mainstream politicians - not just from the far right - playing the race card.

The latest groups of foreigners to be subjected to critical, often xenophobic, scrutiny are the Somalis. In Britain they have been blamed for recent high- profile murders, and have also been accused of offences from gang fighting to fraud to the importation of khat, an hallucinogenic plant.

Here, in the streets of Bossaso, on the very tip of the horn of Africa, you see the sheer grinding poverty, the drought and the endless strife that is driving the dispossessed from Somalia and neighbouring Ethiopia to risk the most perilous voyage in the world.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, an average of 30 boats a month arrive in Yemen from Bossaso. The numbers of deaths are said to be hundreds but could well be thousands. This month at least 39 passengers drowned after being forced to jump off their boat at gunpoint. It was one of many such incidents.

Bossaso in Puntland, a self-declared autonomous area in north-west Somalia, is now the world's busiest smuggling hub. The port, with a population of 200,000, is hosting another 12,000 from the rest of Somalia and Ethiopia seeking a passage out.

Money the workers send back to their families is the biggest foreign revenue earner for Somalia, a country with no economic infrastructure and where the recently elected government cannot even get into the capital which is wracked by a civil war between Islamists and warlords.

Under the "war on terror" rules, America is backing the warlords, their enemies during the ill-fated intervention in Somalia 13 years ago.

The very few who can afford it will pay around US$70 ($109) to stow away on larger ships. But for the vast majority the journey will be spent packed in leaky boats manned by Kalashnikov-carrying crews who, having collected the $30 fee up front, can kill their passengers with little or no risk of ever getting caught.

The boats are designed to take 20-30 people, but they will have hundreds packed into them for the night crossings. The gross overcrowding predictably leads to frequent breakdowns, which the owners solve by flinging their human cargo overboard.

Many survivors are left scarred by being pressed against searing engines and exposure to biting night winds. In one horrific case a crew killed all the passengers, except a 10-year-old Ethiopian boy, Badesa, who was kept to clean the boat.

He was eventually dumped back in Bossaso where he was discovered after sitting on the pavement for days on end with little water and no food.

The International Organisation for Migration took him to a hospital and arranged his repatriation back to Ethiopia. He is now recovering from starvation but unable to speak, traumatised from his experience.

Fued Yusuf, 27, from Mogadishu, was on a boat when fellow passengers were forced into the sea. He and 169 others, squashed into a space 3.7m long and 1.5m wide, had almost reached their destination when the engine broke down.

"The time on the boat was terrible, there were so many of us that we could not move. At the end we could see the lights of the villages on the coast, but then the boat stopped," he recalled. "The owner and his men had AK-47s and they told a group of men to jump out and swim. They had no choice.

"Those who could swim made it to the shore, but the ones who could not died. I don't know how many. There were other deaths, because there was no fresh water left, one man began to drink sea water. His eyes rolled, and he died. You can ask, 'why should people take such risks?' But if you are really poor, and have no way of feeding your wife and children, you have to take a chance.

"This is difficult to explain to someone who has a full stomach every day. After Yemen I went to Saudi Arabia and worked for six months. I earned US$700 ($1100) to make sure my family had essential things. I had seven people to look after."

Women and young girls - a surprisingly large number among the travellers - are vulnerable to sexual abuse and being sold to brothels in Arab countries.

Amira Ali Mohammed paid a fixer $40 for the trip to Saudi Arabia. In the early hours of the morning, on the way to the boat, the fixer and his companion attacked her.

Sitting on a floor of stamped mud in a shelter of torn fabric at "100 Bush" a refugee camp of unrelieved squalor, the 22-year-old, who had fled from Mogadishu, recalled, "They suddenly got hold of my arms and started to drag me away. I could see people in the distance going towards the boat, but there was no one near. I started screaming and screaming.

"The men got scared and I ran back. I could not face going to that boat again. I wanted to work as a maid in Saudi Arabia, they pay you well there. The money was given by my parents, now I have no more money and I am stuck here. I cannot go back to Mogadishu, it is too dangerous."

Betsiba Zerihun, an official with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) who counsels women trying to migrate illegally, said "Girls recently dealt with the case of a 17-year-old girl who was going to catch a boat. She was sleeping in a shed on the beach when she was taken away and gang-raped by nine men. She died."

Officially there are 80,000 registered refugees in Yemen, 75,000 of whom are Somalis. Unofficial estimates put the real figure at several hundred thousands.

Most want to seek jobs outside Yemen, in Saudi and the Gulf states. Others, however, want to go further.

Many of the workers at Bossaso's dockside who lump huge bags of cement at one dollar a day, have been smuggled abroad before and then been deported back to Somalia. But there is a general desire to try again and some want to try their luck in the West, with England as the preferred destination.

Mahmud Abdi Mohammed, 33, made the journey with 170 others in a boat built for 50. He recalled how the crew would lash out with sticks if the passengers tried to stand up. "I was hit on the head and blood kept pouring out," he said. "But at least we were not made to go into the water."

If he were to go abroad again, it would be to Britain.

"I would go from Yemen into Syria and from there to Turkey and Europe and then make my way up."

The men appear well informed about the situation of Somalis who have escaped. Abdi Ali Noor, 28, said, "They are blaming all the people for crimes committed by just a few, that is a generalisation."

Mohammed added: "If someone commits murder, that is wrong in the eyes of Allah, and he should get his punishment. People go to Britain because they know someone already there. This will continue."

Abdi Karim Mahmoud, 21, thinks he will have to pay $40 for his passage. A frail young man who looks young for his age, he is fiercely determined to succeed in his attempts at escape.

"I will try to get to Yemen every day," he said. "If I do not succeed one day I will the next. If they catch me and send me back I will try again. I am not worried about death - I live in Mogadishu."

New Zealander Dennis McNamara, the UN's special adviser on displaced people, said, "What is happening here is horrific. In fact, we have never seen photos like the ones we are seeing here, of men, women and children drowned with their hands tied behind their backs.

"Some of these people will end up in Europe.

"It is in the self-interest of Western nations who say they do not want this influx from the south to help this region so that people do not have to make these dreadful journeys."

One of the main problems is endemic corruption. The racketeers have ties with senior officials in the Puntland administration.

At the central police station 30 people, including women, are being held for offences involving human trafficking. The catch is that none are smugglers, they are would-be migrants. Each was arrested after handing their fares to the smugglers who then miraculously got away from the police.

Among them is 35-year-old Amal Hussein Ali whose seven children are back in Mogadishu, in the care of an aged mother. She faces a maximum of three years in prison, said police chief, Colonel Mohammed Rashid Juma.

He professes sympathy for Amal's plight, but then continues in a stentorian voice, "But she has gone beyond the law, she is an illegal immigrant which is forbidden under the Puntland constitution. She is a criminal."

But there is no such law under the constitution. According to Somali sources the police are waiting for the clans of the prisoners to buy them out.

The human trafficking industry continues to be a profitable one for dealing in misery.

- INDEPENDENT