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Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left their home and crossed the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen.
“We are stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I have nothing, ”she said, sitting on the ground at a construction site without electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.
Yemen migration
Despite the war that has raged for six years, or rather because of it, desperate migrants and cunning smugglers have wanted to exploit Yemen’s illegality while the EU has cracked down on Mediterranean crossings from Turkey and Libya . Far from Western eyes, the Gulf of Aden has become the world’s busiest maritime migration route, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Twenty-year-old Tigrit has been sharing a room for the past three weeks with Oko, another young woman from the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The couple are doing their best to keep their accommodation clean – the room contains only a few sleeping mats and kitchen utensils, but the window is glassless, and dust, dirt, and garbage from outside gets in.
They are the only women, but about 20 young men from Ethiopia and Somalia who have fled poverty or conflict also swarm the work in the city of Ataq, in central Yemen controlled by the government. They cannot continue to the Saudi border due to the fighting at the front and the Covid-19 road closures, but with no money to go home, they too hope this is just a temporary stop.
While IOM organizes regular repatriation flights for stranded migrants from the southern city of Aden, Covid-19 has meant that the Ethiopian government has refused to accept returnees.
Like Tigrit, few of those trapped here knew that Yemen is in the middle of a devastating war, complicating their journey and leaving them vulnerable to abuse and kidnapping for ransom. Hardly anyone seems to know that Saudi Arabia has been jailing migrant workers since the outbreak of the pandemic, or is already trying to expel its population of Yemeni workers, much less those entering illegally.
“Our smuggler is a good man, he helped us find this place to stay, but some of them are bad. I don’t care if I go to Saudi Arabia or go home. I just want to go, ”Tigrit said.
A record 138,000 people, mostly Ethiopians, made the perilous journey across the Red Sea to Yemen last year, which at its narrowest is only 18 miles wide.
Pandemic border closures slowed arrivals in 2020, but at least 34,000 have tried to cross this year. With a new conflict now affecting Ethiopia’s Tigray region, aid organizations are concerned that the numbers will rise more and more.
All put their lives in the hands of smugglers and traffickers who promise a safe passage to the wealth of the neighboring oil-rich kingdom, some motivated by the guarantees of family and friends who have already succeeded. If they have enough money, some people will try the route more than once.
Coordinating through messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, local sales representatives recruit clients in Ethiopian cities and towns, who pay between 10,000-15,000 Ethiopian birr (£ 200- £ 300) to walk or drive to the port cities of Djibouti or Somaliland.
From there, sea captains take on another 10,000 birr to facilitate a journey that can take up to 24 hours on crowded and unsafe ships across the Gulf of Aden to landing points on the southern white sand shores. from Yemen.
Upon arrival, migrants and refugees are often picked up by a handler from their own country who speaks their language, as well as by Yemeni smugglers. Those who can afford it pay to be driven around 1,000 km to the border with Saudi Arabia, sleeping in safe houses along the way while smugglers pay soldiers from Yemen’s different warring parties at checkpoints.
Those who cannot must walk through front-line territories, mountain passes, and scorching desert, usually sleeping on the street, while soldiers beat them for phones and money. Columns of young African men and women walking north are now a common sight across the country, but Yemeni citizens trying to help are often reprimanded for their troubles, encountering trouble at checkpoints if they offer elevators.
Ahmad Nasser Abdi, a 20-year-old from Oromia in Ethiopia, said he was one of 100 people who crossed the Red Sea in a small boat from Bosaso in Somalia in early November. He then walked for seven days to reach Ataq before realizing that the road further north was closed.
“I would do any job. I would even stay here if there was work, but there isn’t, ”he said.
Abdi’s story was shared by many Ethiopians and Somalis whom the Observer met. Some, however, have faced worse: smugglers have taken their charges to detention centers as soon as they land in Yemen. There they are beaten and tortured until their families send the ransom money.
Steps, a local charity that distributes sun hats, food, water and plastic sandals to migrants when they arrive ashore, has begun handing out packs of contraceptive pills to women on the journey in case they are raped. “It happens a lot. At each step of the journey, they are at risk of sexual abuse. If they are taken to a detention center it is a certainty, “said Ahmad Aidrus, a local migration researcher.
Those who make it north into rebel-held territory have also become a source of income for the Houthis, who surround and arrest migrants on the road, charging an “exit fee” of 1,000 Saudi riyals. (£ 200) before taking them to the southern edges of their territory and throwing them back into the desert.
Occupied by more pressing concerns, southern forces loyal to the Yemeni government for the most part turn a blind eye to the boom in human trafficking. As a result, smugglers operate with almost impunity.
For Ahmad Dabisi, who started people smuggling after the outbreak of war, business is doing well. He describes his job with pride, claiming to take good care of his clients to ensure repeat business. It has gotten more difficult, he says, but it can still bring a small number of people to Saudi Arabia, smuggled in private cars.
On the outskirts of Ataq, Dabisi guards a cemetery that contains the bodies of seven of his charges, buried there after their families were informed. Over the years, 70 clients have died from illness, after getting into fights or from drowning at sea, he estimates. Most lie in makeshift cemeteries on the coast.
Dead or alive, for a growing number of people, Yemen is becoming the final destination on a doomed journey. “If it wasn’t me, it would be just another smuggler doing this job. People will keep coming anyway, ”he said.
