Aden/Sanaa  - Traffic is busy in the Gulf of Aden these days. The waterway, between the Arabian Peninsula and Horn of Africa, is used by merchant ships having to pass through the Suez Canal.

It is also infested by Somali pirates - who typically strike in small, highly manoeuvrable speedboats - and patrolled by formidable, anti-piracy warships from many nations.

But hardly anyone takes note of the overloaded little boats of smugglers who, night after night, take Africans fleeing civil strife and poverty across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen.

Many ship captains look the other way when they see the refugee boats, which are often barely seaworthy. This accommodates the pirates, who have begun to use the refugees as human shields.

"We now have signs there are links between the pirates and people smugglers," said Nabil Othman, deputy representative in Yemen of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

An encounter in the Gulf of Aden on March 21 has strongly fuelled suspicion of such links. A French warship came across a fully overloaded and unmanoeuvrable boat carrying about 100 people, which it towed to the Yemeni port of Aden. When the refugees all moved at the same time to one side upon disembarking, the boat capsized and eight people drowned.

Survivors subsequently identified four of those on board as Somali people smugglers. But weapons found later in the boat indicate that the smugglers, who had charged the refugees a lot of money for the illegal crossing, are also pirates.

"There are now Somalis who do double business on the crossing," said a Somali who has lived in Aden for decades. "First they bring refugees to Yemen, and on the way back they attack a ship."

When Yislam Othman Mohammed, a 31-year-old Somali from Mogadishu, got off a boat in Yemen in February 1992, the illegal crossing cost 50 US dollars. Today the price is about four times higher.

A tall man with a long goatee, Mohammed lives hand-to-mouth with his wife and two children in Aden. He washes cars in front of a food store while their owners shop. "In Somalia there's no hope," he said.

Sitting with her small children in the sun next to the store was Aischa Abu Bakr, a 30-year-old Somali. She was begging. Her face was hidden by a black yashmak, and her year-old daughter was sleeping in her lap. When a Yemeni gave her money, four other women and eight adolescents suddenly appeared and surrounded the benefactor.

"May God protect you! Give me something! Have mercy," one of the women cried.

Almost all of the refugees who risk their lives on the perilous passage across the Gulf of Aden, a three-to-five-day journey, come from civil war-torn Somalia or from Ethiopia.

Most of them later leave Yemen and try to cross the desert illegally to seek work in Saudi Arabia or Oman. No one knows how many perish en route.

Some 51,000 boat refugees arrived in Yemen in 2008, according to the UNHCR. The number this year has already reached 17,963. The UNHCR said 53 Somalis and 49 Ethiopians had been found dead on the beach, and that 14 refugees had died at sea.

"Those are only the refugees we know of," Othman pointed out. "The total may be two or three times higher."

Somali refugees are generally allowed to remain in Yemen, while most of the Ethiopians are repatriated if caught. "Somalia has become a jungle," remarked Othman, who said he did not expect the stream of refugees across the Gulf of Aden to subside anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the people smugglers in Somalia, where entire police units and many former naval officers have joined the pirates' ranks, are doing their best to crank up demand for their services. They make short promotional films to counter the occasional television pictures of drowned boat refugees.

The films show Somalis living in beautiful apartments and driving nice cars in places like Saudi Arabia and Dubai. (dpa)