The green hills of Sazan are covered with ferns, broom and laurel. They smell of lavender and rosemary. Pine trees, hornbeams and holm oaks shade the clear blue waters of the Strait of Otranto, which forms the border between the Adriatic and Ionian Seas.
Ivanka Trump anchored here during a boat trip in 2021. The American president's daughter has painted a dreamy picture of the "discovery".
"We swam to the island and walked barefoot all the way to the top. We were completely enchanted,"
American podcaster David Senra at the end of May.
Over the phone from Tirana, environmental anthropologist Aleksandër Trajçe laughs when Ivanka Trump comes up.
I don't know which path she took, but her feet must have been bleeding at the end of that hike. It's not exactly soft terrain.
“Breakpoint”
Opposite Sazan, on the Albanian mainland, bulldozers have been rolling across beaches cut off by sharp barbed wire for a few months now. Here, preparations are underway to realize the vision born during Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner's boat trip: the mega-construction that will transform the coastal area into a luxury resort for the richest of the rich.
The project is being developed by Kushner's venture capital firm Affinity Partners, a company whose capital comes almost exclusively from sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, according to Bloomberg . The blueprints are filled with luxury villas, infinity pools and docks for luxury yachts.
The plans – and the lack of transparency surrounding them – have sparked furious protests. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of Albanians have gathered to show their displeasure, both in the capital Tirana and at the construction site in Zvërnec further south.
"They are trying to sell our country to foreign businessmen. For us, this is a turning point. We will not allow it," says protester Akil Cala.
“Enough of lies”
The 26-year-old was present during the incident that really exploded the protests at the end of May: when a protester was beaten by private security guards at the cordoned-off construction site in Zvërnec. Cala describes how the man was pushed to the ground and roughly dragged away across the beach – all while police watched. What little trust he had in the government disappeared right then and there.
Honestly – at that moment I realized that we have very, very big problems. When the state can't even protect its own citizens, how can we trust them with anything at all?
On the streets of Tirana – where police
the demonstrators with water cannons – increasingly loud demands are now being heard for Prime Minister Edi Rama's resignation.This country has had enough of corruption, enough of lies, enough of a government that only acts according to its own interests, says Akil Cala.
What has now grown into a fury against the entire Albanian government – accused for years of corruption, dubious deals with billion-dollar government contracts and links to organized crime – started with protests against the environmental consequences of the billion-dollar project.
Seals and pelicans
Sazan and the adjacent coastal stretch, the Vjosa-Narta wetland with the large Narta lagoon, are part of a critical ecosystem and serve as an important resting place for migratory birds on their way between Europe and Africa. More than 200 bird species and over 70 endangered species live here, according to the bird conservation organization Birdlife. These include monk seals, hawksbill turtles, grebes and the flamingos that have now become a symbol of a protest movement dubbed the “flamingo revolution.”
Some days we have counted 10,000 flamingos in the lagoon, says Aleksandër Trajçe, who heads Albania's oldest environmental organization PPNEA.
He calls the area one of Albania's most biologically diverse and 'absolutely most important' for the country's flora and fauna.
The beach that is part of this huge project is one of the few places in Albania where loggerhead turtles lay their eggs. And the peak season for egg-laying coincided exactly with the start of construction.
The first time Trajçe heard about the resort plans was in 2024, when Jared Kushner himself posted a post on X with computer-generated images of a “development project” on the Albanian coast. Just weeks earlier, the government in Tirana had suddenly changed the law that previously banned tourism development in protected natural areas. Then nothing happened – at least not outwardly – until April of this year.
There were no consultations, no experts were called in to give their views on the matter. No documentation was made public. Then, on April 30, we heard that bulldozers had arrived. That's when we organized the first protest.
Create jobs?
Albania's anti-corruption agency has now launched an investigation into the project, particularly into who actually has the right to sell the land. It reeks of shady dealings, Trajçe notes.
If you want to write a textbook on how to do shady business, this is the perfect case. The government needs to be very transparent now, open up all the documentation.
Albania is one of Europe's poorest countries, but parts of the population live in great wealth. In Tirana, new skyscrapers pop up every other week and in the back alleys, the elite party with bundles of euro notes. At the same time, the country's young people flee to the EU and Britain in search of a livable life.
"There is a great general dissatisfaction with the way the government is behaving, how they are benefiting the rich at the expense of the people. The basic needs of the people are being ignored," says Trajçe.
Albania cannot afford not to develop a “gift” like Sazan, Prime Minister Rama claimed last year, saying the country “needs luxury tourism like a desert needs water.” Kushner’s resort will create jobs and serve as an economic catalyst for Albania’s modernization, according to Rama.
"We don't buy that anymore. The government needs to start listening to the people," says Aleksandër Trajçe.
Albania is located on the southern part of the Adriatic Sea and borders Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, North Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south. The country is about the same size as Småland and has a population of just over 2.8 million.
For hundreds of years, Albania was part of the Ottoman Empire, but declared independence in 1912. During World War II, the country was occupied first by Italy and then by Nazi Germany, and finally fell under communist rule with the headstrong and brutal Enver Hoxha as party leader and dictator.
Between 1943 and 1985, Hoxha ruled Albania with an iron fist. Religion and free elections were banned, the country was isolated from the outside world, and the population suffered under oppression and difficult living conditions. Mass executions, torture, and wiretapping were commonplace, and in Hoxha's political prison camps, systematic abuses were committed against prisoners.
After the final fall of communism in 1990, Albania has sought better relations with the West. In 2009, the country became a member of NATO and in 2014 it was accepted as a candidate for EU membership.
Since 2013, the country has been led by a social democratic government under Prime Minister Edi Rama (born 1964), a former long-time mayor of Tirana and former national basketball player. Rama's Socialist Party of Albania was born through a reorganization of Hoxha's Albanian Party of Labor.
The World Bank today classifies Albania as a middle-income country. However, it is still one of Europe's poorest countries, with widespread corruption and a large informal sector.
Sources: Country Guide/UI
