Desperate Africans seek unlikely refuge in Yemen

KHARAZ, Yemen (Reuters) - Yemen is a poor and oftendysfunctional Arab country, but to thousands of Somalis andEthiopians it is a notch better than misery and danger at home.

Obah Idli, a 19-year-old from Somalia's anarchic capitalMogadishu, made it to an isolated refugee camp in the desert,relieved to be alive after paying smugglers to sail her acrossthe Red Sea from Djibouti with 30 of her compatriots.

"It was a very small boat. Everyone was fighting for spaceand water came in," she said, shifting her pink shawl as shewaited for UNHCR refugee agency staff to register her at theKharaz camp, 180 km (110 miles) from the port city Aden.

"I'd heard the smugglers put people in the sea. When welanded, the water came up to our mouths, but we made it," shesaid. "Last night I slept well, before I was always scared. Youcan't stay in Mogadishu. I need a better future."

Many Africans consider Yemen a gateway to other parts ofthe Middle East and the West. It shares a border withoil-producing Saudi Arabia, which hosts millions of foreignworkers.

But some Africans find their odyssey ends here, in liveshalf-lived because Yemen is itself too poor to offer a betterfuture.

The flow from Somalia began when warlords toppled dictatorMohamed Siad Barre in 1991. Clan warfare, famine and chaosengulfed the Horn of Africa nation, where an interim governmentand its Ethiopian allies are now battling Islamist rebels.

Nearly 30,000 Somalis and Ethiopians came ashore in Yemenlast year. About 700 bodies washed up, some gnawed by sharks,and another 700 people went missing, U.N. officials say.

"Smugglers stuff people onto small boats like sardines,"said Samer Haddadin, a UNHCR protection officer. "They spendtwo or three days like that and arrive with skin problemsbecause they have to urinate where they sit. There is no way tomove."

Passengers can expect no mercy from the crew. Tales aboundof beatings, rape and killings on the voyage. "One group toldme they had been with a woman whose baby was crying -- thesmuggler took the baby and dropped it in the sea," Haddadinsaid.

Some, like Idli, arrive from Djibouti, a sea route that ismuch shorter and safer than the more commonly used one from theport of Bosasso in the semi-autonomous region of Puntland.

At least 37 Somalis were drowned off Yemen on February 20when the captain of their vessel ordered them to swim ashore,the Yemeni news agency Saba reported. About 70 were rescued.

It's hard to tell refugees from economic migrants, butYemen treats all Somali arrivals as refugees and the rest asillegal immigrants, unless they obtain refugee status fromUNHCR.

SEARCH FOR OPPORTUNITY

In a dusty alleyway in Aden's Basateen slum, home toSomalis and Yemenis with links to Somalia, a young man who gavehis name as Mahed said he was aiming for the Saudi border.

"It's hard to enter Saudi Arabia. We pay $50 and it'sdangerous, but we will try. We have no hope in Somalia."

When Africans land in Yemen, half of them simply disperseon their own, UNHCR representative Adel Yasmin explained. Therest, mostly Somalis, pass through reception centers, withabout a third of them seeking UNHCR assistance to get to Kharazcamp.

Many of these hop off the buses in Aden before everreaching the camp and go to Basateen or elsewhere in Yemen.Even those who get to Kharaz rarely stay for more than threemonths.

Kharaz, on a desolate wind-scoured plain where summer heatsoars near 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit), shelters 9,500refugees in cinderblock huts. There are schools, clinics andfood rations, but no jobs.

Mohammed Assanali, 35, an ethnic Oromo, reflected on his 10years in the camp after fleeing his homeland in Ethiopia, wherehe was suspected of backing the outlawed Oromo LiberationFront.

"Look at me," he laughed bitterly in a courtyard where hehas planted saplings in the dirt. "Just I am playing with mychildren. It's a meaningless life. Sometimes it's darkness."

"NO FUTURE"

Assanali, like many of the 650 Ethiopians in Kharaz, daresnot leave the camp for fear he might be caught and deported.

Refugees in Kharaz are marooned in futility, unable to goback to their insecure homelands or to find work in Yemen.

The Basateen slum -- which resembles a miniature Mogadishuminus the gunmen -- is more squalid, but Somalis there are lessisolated and can at least seek casual work in Aden.

"I couldn't stand camp life," said a woman in a black scarfwith orange flowers who gave her name as Fawzia. The23-year-old has seven children and a runaway husband. Shesurvives on casual domestic work, but has failed to pay herrent for six months.

"I hate myself, I hate my children, I have no future," shesaid vacantly. Beside her, a baby lay untended in its own vomiton the grubby blue carpet of her trash-filled shack.

UNHCR and its partner agencies working with Somali tribalelders do their best to combat social stresses in Basateen withmicro-credits and self-reliance projects that help some womenfeed their children, even when their husbands have vanished.

But some are overwhelmed and even ask to return to Kharazwhere they can get U.N. assistance. All need relief from thepenury that fuels domestic violence and sometimes prostitution.

"Sometimes young girls come to Yemen, dreaming of a betterlife or of going to Saudi Arabia," said Aisha Said, a UNHCRsocial worker. "If they fail, maybe they do this prostitutionor survival sex, but I can't tell you how many do it."

(For other stories in a Reuters package from Yemen, pleasedouble-click on)

(Editing by Clar Ni Chonghaile)