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AL-BAIDA, YEMEN- MAY 2007 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.

BOSASSO, SOMALIA- JANUARY 2007 Watching over a group of refugees at one of his network's safe houses hidden deep in Bossaso town's back streets, thirty-four year old big fish smuggler Omar lights a cigarette. Working at sea since he was a teenager, Omar spent years helping local fishermen to hunt down sharks for their fins but illegal commercial fishing put an end to the business. He involved himself instead in the arms trade, ferrying weapons to and from Yemen. War in Somalia provided him with new financial rewards however when Bossaso became the country's hub in human trafficking, as more and more people began to flee the brutal fighting while warlords tore the country apart.The financial rewards for him are the main draw. He now makes a minimum of $5000 per month ferrying migrants and refugees across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen; far in excess of the average income of just $100 a month in Somalia. Omar may be a big fish in Bossaso but he is just part of a bigger countrywide chain. His unnamed network has offices in Mogadishu, Belet Weyne and Galkayo in southern Somalia, and Burao on the Ethiopian border. These tahrib pay $20 to one of our offices before making their own way here- a receipt then guides them to me when they get here and I charge $50 to get them to Yemen but then the boat owners and agents take commission, and of course we have to pay off the authorities.Omar is just one of eight key smugglers working in Bossaso linked to an international network of agents and traffickers. He shrugs off the violence and death perpetrated at the hands of his men. When he looks at the forty migrants in his charge waiting to board boats to Yemen that night he calls them blood money.

BIR ALI, YEMEN- MAY 2007 Having arrived in the middle of the night following a fifty-seven hour long voyage from Somalia, dawn breaks over a group of Ethiopian migrants and refugees at a sandy beach near Bir Ali on Yemen's southern coast. A pair of tiny fishing boats sailing close together brought a total of two hundred and fifty-three tahrib within sight of land but coming under fire from Yemeni soldiers, quickly turned around and headed back out into deep waters. Returning the following night for a second attempt at offloading their human cargo, smugglers demanded extra money from passengers if they wanted to be dropped close to shore. Despite being unable to swim, most were thrown overboard two kilometres out at sea as they protested. At least thirty passengers are estimated to have drowned. Only twenty-three of the bodies were ever found.Separated by nationality on arrival, the Somali refugees were first counted and taken away for processing at a nearby reception centre just a couple of hours after setting foot on the beach. The Ethiopians who remain behind have not been so lucky. Despite being severely traumatised and dehydrated, soldiers have detained the exhausted group, fearing that unlike the Somalis who have the automatic right to asylum, they might try to escape. It took fifteen hours before they were finally allowed to proceed to the centre and receive the water, food and medical attention they so badly needed. Most haven't eaten or had access to drinking water for a long time now, having spent days at beaches waiting to depart from Somalia. Others are just in a state of shock. Having been beaten and robbed by smugglers during the voyage, they must now proceed on their journey into Yemen knowing that their friends and relatives are unaccounted for.

SHIMBIRO, SOMALIA- NOVEMBER 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.

DJIBOUTI, DJIBOUTI - MARCH 2008 Nine year old Kali Abduhi Omar stares at her reflection in the screen of a broken television set as she sits in a make-shift room in one of Djiboutiville's illicit doss houses.Following a mortar strike on her family's home in central Mogadishu, Kali and her younger brother have just arrived in Djibouti after spending weeks on the road in a bid to escape Somalia. Their exhausted mother curled up in the corner of the room is sick and scarred from bullet wounds she sustained in the attack. Four other Somali women and their children share the cramped space with Kali as they wait to hear news from a female contact about the smugglers who will help them continue their journey in their bid for asylum in Yemen.

BOSASSO, SOMALIA- DECEMBER 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 Situated on the main Mogadishu Road, the colloquially named "Moqdishu Restaurant" is one of the first stopping off points for migrants and refugees heading north from the capital on their way across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen. Open late into the night, displaced teenage boys at the busy cafe dish up food and drink, while a clandestine smuggler's bureau and doss house to the rear facilitates new arrivals.

AL-KHARAZ, YEMEN - APRIL 2008 Utterly exhausted, a group of Somali refugees crouch down beneath an illuminated signboard reading, You are welcome to UNHCR Kharaz. Arriving close to Dhubab on Yemen's western coast in a smuggler's boat that has brought them across the Bab El-Mendib straights from Djibouti, the stranded group were spotted by military camped on a nearby beach. Transported by truck, the refugees have finally arrived at Yemen's only refugee camp in the early hours of the morning. As staff are alerted, they must sit and wait outside the main gates for now. Once morning comes, they will be called to an office and formerly registered one by one, their cases documented and their photographs taken. And then finally, they will be given official status as refugees.

MAYFA'AH, YEMEN - MAY 2008 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.

DJIBOUTI, DJIBOUTI - MARCH 2008 Fast asleep on sheets of cardboard, twenty eight year old Abas Hassan Ulusow spends the night out in the open on the rooftop of the Hanwari Shop in the centre of Djiboutiville. After fighting in Mogadishu devastated his house, Abas fled Somalia with the dream of making it to Yemen and being able to support his family. Still holding out for funds from relatives with which to pay the smuggling gangs for the onward sea crossing, a week after he arrived here Abas is anxious to proceed with his journey but worried about the high prices being charged. Rumours are rife in town that the smuggler's middlemen are taking fares from the tahrib and then quickly disappearing without a trace. After chatting with new friends, he is now contemplating setting off to follow the dangerous overland route through Eritrea, Sudan and Libya that could eventually bring him to Europe.

BURUM, YEMEN - MAY 2008 Crouching under black volcanic cliffs in a rocky cove, it took more than four hours for this group of Somali refugees to be discovered after landing on a secluded beach in the dead of night. Escorted by authorities to a nearby police station at Burum, the new arrivals were then contained on the road outside until proper assistance arrived. Provided with a snack of milk and biscuits to sustain them, they were subsequently taken by truck to a UNHCR run reception centre.

BASATINE, YEMEN - MARCH 2008 Having just arrived in the slums of Aden, a young girl in a phone booth attempts to call relatives in Somalia to let them know she is safe. Her book contains contact details for her family and the numbers of smugglers in Yemen that she hopes will eventually take her to Saudi Arabia. Nearly all new arrivals carry these precious tiny address books with them, often still protected in plastic bags having been waterproofed for the boat journey.

BOSASSO, SOMALIA - DECEMBER 2007 Having spent the last five days at sea and nearly three weeks travelling on the roads, Usmaan and Mahmud recover along with fellow survivors in the confines of a smuggler Omar's safe house in Bossaso town. Approaching a beach on Yemen's eastern coast in the dead of night, the tiny fishing boat in which they were in came under attack as Yemeni soldiers fired randomly into the dark sea. There were just eight survivors. Despite the captain being shot, the two remaining crew managed to turn the boat around and navigate their way back across the seas. Sailing with the captain's body and the five Tahrib who had remained on board, it took them three more days to make it back to Bossaso without drinking water or food.Usmaan and Mahmud are now ready to try again. They hope to spend a few days resting and has asked Omar to help them cross for a second time. There is no going back.

FUWWA, YEMEN - MAY 2008 Soaking wet and covered in sand, groups of newly arrived Somali migrants huddle together on the beach at Fuwwah as they try to keep warm. Landing in the early hours of the morning after crossing the Gulf of Aden in tiny boats operated by smugglers, most are tired and disorientated after the dangerous two day voyage. One of three boatloads of migrants and refugees that left Somalia together, the group lost sight of the others as high waves almost overwhelmed them during a patch of bad weather. Assumed to have been lost at sea, one of the boats never arrived in Yemen.

DJIBOUTI, DJIBOUTI - MARCH 2008 Covering their bodies with tattered blankets and veils, a group of thirty female refugees spend the night sleeping along the pavement in Djiboutiville's Rue Issa. Having fled the escalating fighting in Mogadishu, this group of women arrived in Djibouti just three days before.Record numbers crossing the porous border has lead to serious overcrowding in the city's slums. For these already vulnerable women, there are no shelters, no place of refuge at the mosques and nowhere to turn as the already impoverished city dwellers start to charge exorbitant rents that remain unaffordable to all but a few of the tahrib. Testament to this, females have been seen sleeping out in the open for the first time. Most have paid out what little money they have to bed their children down for the night in a place of safety; they don't have enough shillings spare to put themselves out of harm's way.

DJIBOUTI, DJIBOUTI - MARCH 2008 Lying in a row under sheets, childhood friends Ahmed Moalin, Mohamed Mousa and Sharmake Abdulahi thumb through their fake passports. Purchased for $50 each on the streets of Mogadishu, con men have simply filled in the stolen documents with the boy's details making their entries into Somaliland and Djibouti an easy affair. Coming from a country where few people have ever set eyes on official paperwork, the forged passports have become objects of fascination within the gang of tahrib. They won't need them to travel to Yemen on smuggler's boats but are hanging onto them just in case things go wrong; there has been plenty of chatter about overland routes to Europe and they think they could prove useful in the long run.

BASATINE, YEMEN - MARCH 2008 Back in the slums of Basatine, Mohamed returns late in the evening after a fruitless day spent walking Aden's streets in search of work. Having arrived in Yemen from Bossaso two months ago, Mohamed is just one of just eleven men to have survived a perilous journey across the Gulf of Aden. He is still traumatized, having witnessed one hundred of the other passengers on board the tiny boat drown as they capsized at sea. Escaping bloodshed in Mogadishu and then nearly being shot dead by smugglers on the beaches of Somalia, Mohamed cannot as yet even contemplate moving on with his life. He is doing his best to eke out a living but after what he has witnessed, he spends most of his time in a restless daze.

BASATINE, YEMEN - MARCH 2008 Carrying his wordly possessions in a small backpack, a newly arrived "cowboy" makes his way from the dusty bus station as he takes his first steps in the slums of Basatine.

BASATINE, YEMEN - MARCH 2008 Salima is nineteen and is wearing red lipstick but the clothes she has on are not her own. She doesn't like them and appears very bashful- or shying as she puts it. Along the rubbish-strewn lanes of Basatine, her temporary home is a cramped, dark room in a safe house controlled by trafficking gangs. There are four such clandestine houses hidden in this shantytown, sending young Somali men and women on to Saudi Arabia, where they hope to find work and a better life. Having fled the ongoing violence the plagues their homeland, they are now free to stay with the human traffickers until they find the $25 that they need to be driven into the desert. Here it can take weeks here to save that kind of money. Along with her baby boy Abdi Sallam and the husband she adored, the family stuck together in their little two-storey house. One morning, undeterred by the sound of gunfire in the distance, Salima popped out to buy some bread for the family's breakfast. A man walking ahead of her fell to the ground, hit by a stray bullet. Rushing over to the wounded stranger, the screech of a Hound rocket sent her crashing to the ground. Mortars had pierced the upper floor of her home. I found my husband and child but they were not with us anymore. Both had been killed.

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.

BIR ALI, YEMEN- MAY 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.

SHIMBIRO, SOMALIA - NOVEMBER 2007 Standing in choppy shoulder deep water, Somali refugees look back anxiously from the sea as they try to locate friends and relatives left behind on Shimbiro Beach. Preparing to board one of three smuggler's boats that will depart simultaneously for Yemen, many of the passengers have become separated from those that they had hoped to make this high-risk journey with. As the crew hauls passengers from the water, each is already soaking wet as they step onboard. Before they even depart, the one hundred and twenty eight Somalis and Ethiopians tied down inside the tiny boat begin to shiver as strong winds blow in for the sea. Their fate is now sealed. Only eleven of the people who took this boat were to ever reach Yemen alive.