(Tom Finn, Reuters | Haradh, Yemen) - Unfastening his grubby sling, Ali Yusef let out a gasp as his mangled forearm dropped limply to his side. Jumping out of a speeding pick-up truck to evade kidnappers last week, the young Ethiopian was lucky to get away with only a broken arm.

Yusef is one of thousands of Ethiopians lured by the promise of a better life in wealthy oil-rich Gulf Arab states who have found themselves trapped in a lawless and violent stretch of territory on the Yemeni side of the border with Saudi Arabia.

"It (jumping) was worth the risk," said Yusef, showing the blisters on his palms. "I'd rather die than let them catch me."

Plagued by sandstorms, drought, gun runners and drug smugglers, the 1,800-km (1,100-mile) strip of land along the Yemeni-Saudi border has long been a desolate, dangerous place.

But crumbling government control and a surge of migrants, driven out of the Horn of Africa by drought, poverty and persecution, have turned it into a kind of hell where criminal gangs roam freely, trading migrants like commodities.

Aid workers in Haradh, a smugglers' outpost on the border, say that the kidnapping of migrants for ransom is now common practice.

"Kidnap, robbery, sexual abuse, it's part of everyday life here," said Ali Al-Jafri, a logistics officer from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which runs a camp in Haradh for 3,000 Ethiopians awaiting repatriation.

"It's become a business, an industry in itself."

Exploiting the chaos in the country after mass protests forced President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down after 33 years in office, more than 103,000 men and women crossed the Red Sea into Yemen in 2011 - double the previous year's figure, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The increased numbers are part of an exodus from the Horn of Africa that the UNHCR and IOM say represents one of the largest flows of economic refugees on earth.

"What you see in Yemen is just the tip of the iceberg," said Yacoub El Hillo, the director of the UNHCR's Bureau for the Middle East and North Africa.

"This is a lucrative business, it is a criminal business, and it is growing."

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