Kushner Island? Why a planned resort has provoked protests in Albania

The government hopes the high-profile project can position Albania as a major global tourism destination – but environmental concerns are rife.

To Ivanka Trump, Sazan was a “find”. Thousands of Albanians, however, fear that it could be their loss.

In an interview with American podcaster David Senra this week, Ivanka – the eldest daughter of United States President Donald Trump – described the uninhabited island off Albania’s west coast almost as a patch of land that she and her husband Jared Kushner were the first to discover.

“We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim. Effectively, that’s how we found it,” she said, speaking of the island where a proposed luxury development plan linked to Kushner has provoked widespread anger across Albania.

“We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”

That captivation ultimately led to a project which was unveiled more than two years ago involving the construction of luxury hotels. But when the bulldozers arrived on the beaches in recent days, protesters rallied in the thousands.

The government says the development on Albania’s Adriatic coast will be hugely valuable for the country – but it has drawn opposition from environmental campaigners and critics of longtime Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama.

So what is the Kushner’s luxury resort project – and why has it caused so much controversy?

The Kushner vision is a sprawling, seaside development brimming with hotels, apartments and villas in the wildlife reserve of the protected delta area of Vjosa-Narta. It will also involve turning a former communist-era military base into a resort on Sazan.

Shortly after the project’s announcement in 2024, the government granted “strategic investor” status to Atlantic Incubation Partners, a firm linked to Kushner’s Affinity Partners fund.

Ivanka Trump has since visited the Vlora region, accompanied by architects and investors, and has also met Rama.

Excavators and other heavy machinery began work in the area last month, opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing.

The investment on Sazan island is valued at $1.6bn, while Rama recently referred to a four-billion euro ($4.7bn) project that he said included the Vlora area.

Affinity Partners referred Al Jazeera’s questions to a PR agency working on the development project. The agency said the development is being led by Sazan Real Estate Development LLC, not Affinity Partners, and that any investors involved are doing so “in their personal capaci