Each week hundreds arrive. Most of them Somalis and Ethiopians, they seek to flee East Africa for Europe or the Middle East in the hope of escaping violence and poverty.

Bossaso, a small port town surrounded by ancient buildings in the northeastern Puntland region of Somalia, is witnessing a boom in human trafficking.

Because of its post on the main smuggling corridor in northeastern Somalia, Puntland has one of the highest rates of human trafficking in East Africa.

But while Bossaso’s regional government runs the local administration and handles security, human smuggling is one of several issues over which it is suspiciously silent.

''Our operations are well-coordinated and the government’s efforts to block us amount to nothing,'' one smuggler at the Bossaso harbor told The Media Line under condition of anonymity. He points to one of the wooden boats his colleagues used to smuggle people out of the country.
 
''I hope to build good hotels in Puntland and then I will stop this dangerous work,'' he says clutching a long stick for beating immigrants in the sea on his hands.

Like many smugglers, he took up this work for the opportunity to earn easy money by driving immigrants across the shark-infested waters of the Gulf of Aden into Yemen.

Refugees are typically charged between $50 to $100 for the treacherous journey. Some refugees are lured from nearby bus stations by smugglers promising to lead them to a better life.

But these promises are rarely fulfilled. More often than not, smugglers are all too happy to take their fee and abandon the migrants at the slightest indication of trouble. Many of the migrants fall victim to human traffickers, who hold them against their will and force them to work in the bush lands of Saudi Arabia.
 
Hundreds die at sea every month and for those who do survive, the sad reality is often arrest, deportation and refugee camps. Those who succeed as migrants, usually do so having attained poor jobs with no legal status and little freedom.

Abdirahman Haji Nur, a Somali analyst in Puntland, said that the majority of the thousands of immigrants who die at sea are under 18 years old.

Tsegaye Gilu, a young Ethiopian man, stands under an old crumbling building clutching a small tattered bag in his left hand. He fled Ethiopia by road to reach Bossaso hoping to catch a boat to Yemen.

''I’m trying to get to Saudi Arabia via Yemen to get a good job and find a better life,” the dark-skinned, tall 20-year-old told The Media Line.
 
Gilu, who survived tragedy in the Gulf of Aden, was repatriated from Saudi Arabia, but says he won't turn any work down. It’s his only chance to send money back home to his family in Jijiga, the capital of Ethiopia's Ogaden region.
 
''Work is work,” the famished-looking Gilu says as he sits on a stone next to a ramshackle building. “I have been in towns where I have no money, job or life. I'm ready for any employment regardless of the conditions involved.''
 
While some Yemeni villagers have tried to help the new arrivals, care for the sick, rescue those drowning and bury the dead, the Yemeni government has responded differently. Most Somalis are sent to squalid refugee camps. Ethiopians and Eritreans can expect arrest or deportation, and reports have emerged lately of the Yemeni government forcing Somali migrants to fight against the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.
 
These days, smugglers are extra careful to search every passenger, banning everything beyond small biscuits and two liters of water for the long journey ahead.

It is commonplace for smugglers to throw migrants overboard, even pregnant woman and children. Over-laden boats often sink in storms or in calmer waters from the sheer weight of their cargo.

In 2007, Gilu remembers, one of his co-passengers managed to smuggle a gun aboard the boat. When the smugglers started beating some of the immigrants, throwing some in the sea, the armed refugee shot one of the armed smugglers and another two who were beating passengers. News spread quickly and searches and brutality have since been stepped up.

''If you don't inspect them they will pick up weapons and kill us,” one refugee smuggler, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Media Line.

Despite the fact that human smuggling would be easier to curb than other crimes in the region, not a single person has been brought to court, fuelling widespread suspicions that Puntland regional officials are involved in the smuggling.
 
As Bossaso authorities were telling local media that they were cracking down on illegal migration, closing ports and confiscating immigration boats last year, the numbers of smuggled persons surged at the same time.

''We have begun to stop the trend of human-trafficking,” Muse Gele Yusuf, governor of Puntland’s Bari region told The Media Line.  “We’re forcing immigrants to go back to their countries.