While some sell it as the biggest investment in the country's history, others call it the „dictatorship of dirty money". In southern Albania, the largest civic revolt since the fall of communism more than 30 years ago has flared up - over a luxury tourism project worth 1.4 billion euros, backed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.

The project spans two sites: the island of Sazan, a former Soviet military base with abandoned facilities, and an eight-kilometer stretch of coastline near Vlora, close to the Pishë Poro-Narta nature reserve. That's exactly where the problem lies - the lagoon is a critical migratory zone for over 70 endangered species, including flamingos, Mediterranean turtles, and rare birds.

The revolt, dubbed the „flamingo revolution", kicked off after bulldozers began clearing forest in the protected zone three weeks ago. Protesters see oligarchs exploiting one of Europe's poorest countries, and the anger is greater because parliament amended strict environmental laws precisely to enable the project. „We want to stop the dictatorship of dirty money", one of the protesters said.

Prime Minister Edi Rama fiercely defends the project, calling it a „blessing" that will create jobs and increase green areas by 25 percent. He promises development to EU environmental standards and rejects any calls to resign. Ivanka and Kushner, for their part, brush off the message from the street with „the project is incredible".

The scenario is painfully familiar in the Balkans: foreign capital, a domestic government rewriting laws overnight, and nature ending up as collateral damage in the name of „development". The question Albanians are asking is the one that rarely gets an honest answer here either - when a country is sold off piece by piece, whose pocket actually fills up, and who's left with nothing but the lost landscape?