Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia, Alixandra Fazzina's photography

Omar, refugee smuggler. Linked to an international network of agents and traffickers, “big fish” Omar lights a cigarette. One of eight key human smugglers and traffickers working in Bossaso, he watches over a group of refugees at one of his safe houses as they prepare for the voyage to Yemen. He calls them “blood money”. Bossaso, Somalia, April-December 2008.

Illuminated by torchlight, the dead body of a man is discovered in shallow water at Al-Baida Beach. Bloody marks around his face reveal that he had sustained a heavy beating prior to being thrown into the sea. One of a group of three hundred and sixty five migrants and refugees to have arrived in Yemen that night on two smugglers’ boats launched from Somalia, survivors witnessed passengers being pummelled with rifle butts and knives as they protested at being dropped far from land. In the dark sea, many succumbed to the water, disorientated and unable to swim. By morning, a total of thirty-four bodies were found at Al-Baida; either drowned or killed at the hands of the smugglers. AL-BAIADA, YEMEN, May 2007.

As a storm sets in during the night, a smuggler’s boat becomes beached in rough seas at a remote cove on Somalia’s horn. Summoned by bursts of live gunfire, migrants and refugees sleeping in the surrounding mountains are ordered by the armed gangs to help stabilise the stricken vessel that they are waiting to board. Using ropes, they work in chain gangs at gunpoint, pulling hard to tow the boat into fierce incoming waves in an attempt free it from the sands. SHIMBIRO, SOMALIA, NOVEMBER 2007.

For this group of Somali and Ethiopian tahrib, the days of waiting nervously for their passage are long. There is little to do in the back alleys of Bossaso and the smugglers are keen that their human cargo don’t stray too far. In the heat of the afternoon, a group sit around smoking water pipes and sharing bags of the narcotic qat that they chew and then wash down with 7-Up and green tea. Most sit close to their plastic bags of possessions - a spare T-shirt, a mobile phone, a shawl and maybe a radio and some cigarettes. They have brought little with them on their journeys. In less than two hours, station wagons will come and collect batches of ten passengers at a time. Transporting them to waiting trucks at the edge of one of the town’s camps, where armed gangs will then escort them to the Horn’s remote beaches. Here they will spend their last night at the tip of their home continent. BOSASSO, SOMALIA, DECEMBER 2007.

Working for a people trafficking syndicate, a CB radio operator talks to truck drivers bringing migrants along the Mogadishu Road to Bossaso. Known as “Radio Kabila” after Congo’s president, this Hawiye smuggling gang’s Bossaso office is linked to a chain of others across south central Somalia.Sitting behind a fenced off desk, the operator slowly attends to a row of migrants and refugees that have been sitting on plastic chairs under a painted skull and cross-bones since early morning. On their way to Yemen, they are waiting for hawala money transfers to arrive from relatives; few have carried enough cash for their onward sea journey fearing robbery on the roads. Their families will have to visit a sister office to send the money and it cannot be paid out here until the operator receives a call on the radio. Once it comes, it is unlikely that it will ever leave Radio Kabila. Most will immediately pay the fare of a million shillings to the boss in order to secure their passage across the Gulf of Aden. For now though they must be patient, the agent is busy talking to middlemen as they coordinate a pick-up of the latest batch of human cargo due to arrive in town any moment. BOSASSO, SOMALIA, DECEMBER 2007.

Queuing along a wire fence, women form a long line as they wait to receive a cooked dinner ration of tea, rice and a little fish from a busy kitchen at the Mayfa’ah Reception Centre. Exhausted after their long journeys, over the coming two or three days in transit here, the temporary residents will receive cooked breakfasts, lunches and dinners as they recover their strength. MAYFA’AH, YEMEN, MAY 2008.

Mould slowly creeps over a crudely drawn map sketched in charcoal depicting smuggling routes from the Horn of Africa “To Arabia” on the walls of the an old fort close to Somalia’s southern frontier. SIYU, KENYA, FEBRAURY 2007.

Having been washed ashore with the morning tide, a row of corpses line Al-Baida Beach at dawn. Hauled from the water by fellow voyagers, a total of thirty-four bodies were found at sunrise as they slowly drifted inland. Just one week after an almost identical tragedy saw thirty dead on a nearby beach, Somali smugglers continue to drop their human cargo out at sea without regard for life rather than coming close to shore and risking detection. Having paid a million shillings each, for the survivors that have now finally made it to Yemen, the realisation of just what a gamble they have taken with their own destinies hits home. Weak and barely able to move, hours after landing many still lie with their faces half buried in the sand, coughing after having swallowed so much sea water. Most sit weeping, having spent the night looking for lost relatives, or simply in shock at the mortality that surrounds them. BIR ALI, YEMEN, MAY 2007.