After Miami-based firm Affinity Partners secured their first building permit for major developments on Albania’s coast on April 29, outrage in the small Balkan country has steadily grown.
Within weeks, a video of a protestor being beaten and dragged away by private security guards went viral, helping ignite what has become known as Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution.” On July 4, tens of thousands of Albanians marched in the capital, Tirana, with other demonstrations taking place across the country.
The movement is driven by two planned projects: a $1.7 billion luxury resort on Sazan Island and a $4.6 billion development around the Zvërnec Peninsula and Vjosë-Nartë wetlands. Similar developments have triggered protests elsewhere in the Balkans in recent years, often tapping into wider economic and corruption concerns.
The Flamingo Revolution has no single organizer. It draws from a loose network of environmental groups, anti-corruption activists, and ordinary citizens, many connected to civic organizations that Western governments helped build over three decades— but now operate independently of their original sponsors.
The primary financiers of the two projects have especially made these demonstrations notable. Both are being led by Affinity Partners, headed by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump and his informal adviser. Since its founding in 2021, the firm has been backed largely by sovereign wealth from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar.
Gulf states have increasingly been investing in large tourism projects over the last several years to diversify beyond hydrocarbons. But sovereign wealth investments are “more frequently also used to extend political reach,” states political economist Karen E. Young. Designed to cement relationships with foreign governments and business elites, Affinity Partners now acts as an informal bridge between Middle Eastern capitals and the White House.
For investors, Albania’s path toward EU membership would dramatically increase the value of planned tourism and other infrastructure developments. Sazan is, meanwhile, located in a strategically important position at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea, and new ports, marinas, and other developments could have dual-use applications for security purposes in a crucial area.
But as relations between Brussels and Washington have deteriorated during Trump’s second term, Albania’s EU ambitions have made the projects increasingly sensitive. On June 17, the European Parliament condemned the 2024 amendments to Albania’s Law on Protected Areas, which cleared the way for the development of these projects, and asked that they be withdrawn. It also called for construction to be suspended in protected areas and compliance with EU nature protection standards. Several EU parliament members also warned that Albania’s accession could be jeopardized if the projects proceed.
The EU has strong reasons to defend its standards in a candidate country. Failing to do so would weaken its credibility and encourage future projects by foreign powers approved through questionable means. Yet Brussels has stopped short of joining calls by many protestors for Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign. Many demonstrators also reject the mainstream opposition, suggesting political instability could remain regardless of who governs the country, complicating the EU’s wider expansion plans in the Balkans.
Albania’s EU ambitions now conflict with expanding American commercial and security interests, as well as investment from Gulf states. As divisions have grown in the Western alliance, countries that previously sat comfortably in its orbit have become areas of competition and instability.
The Serbian Precedent
Albania’s protests have also highlighted the growing autonomy of the transnational civil society network that the West spent more than three decades building in the Balkans. NGOs, such as the European Endowment for Democracy, and agencies like USAID helped strengthen local institutions, watchdogs, and media networks to encourage integration with NATO and the EU. When institution-building failed, Western support also extended to protest movements to promote leadership change.
Serbia, another EU candidate, became the first proving ground for the “color revolution” model—widespread public protests seeking revolutionary political change—despite the term becoming more closely associated with former Soviet states. During the 2000 overthrow of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives explained how it sought to “fund programs and media outlets that could disseminate messages pushing immediate political change.”
After Milošević was toppled, the number of Western NGOs in Serbia rose dramatically in the 2000s, building local civic capacity. A 2015 article in the Law Explorer, however, pointed out how contrary to the beliefs that these nonprofits were “a major progressive force countering the crude nationalism of the general public and leading Serbia on the road to eventual European Union membership. … much of the sector has in fact played a compromised, coopted, and at times destructive role in preparing the ground for and reinforcing neoliberal restructuring.”
Although relations with many Western governments deteriorated after Kosovo’s independence was recognized in 2008, the nonprofit networks remained. They resurfaced during anti-government protests in 2011 in Belgrade, and again in demonstrations against the UAE-backed Belgrade Waterfront redevelopment from 2015, foreshadowing Albania’s current movement. Protests against Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić have meanwhile erupted repeatedly since 2017.
By 2021, these networks were no longer just challenging local governments. Major international resource projects had become targets, and demonstrations against the Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto’s proposed lithium mine in Serbia forced the development to be suspended in 2022. Its revival in 2024 kick-started demonstrations again. Work on the mine eventually stopped in 2025.
The civic networks the West had built showed they were now capable of organizing large protest movements without Western backing, and increasingly against Western interests. The EU viewed the lithium mine as crucial to reducing dependence on Chinese critical minerals, turning a local environmental dispute into a geopolitical dilemma for the bloc.
In response to the protests against the mine in 2024, former US Ambassador to Serbia, Christopher R. Hill, stated that “Russia seized an opportunity here to try to drive a wedge between Serbia and the West,” while Moscow and Belgrade accused the West of “preparations for mass unrest and an attempted coup,” according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
The competing accusations reflected growing uncertainty over a civil society network that had become increasingly autonomous and capable of sustaining itself through international cooperation. The 2022 Jadar Declaration, which Balkan Green Energy News stated was a show of “international solidarity in the struggle against lithium exploitation and in environmental protection,” was signed by dozens of Serbian groups like Ne damo Jadar alongside international organizations like Extinction Rebellion, and demonstrated this evolution. Serbia also shares the lithium deposits with Bosnia, and activists have begun limited instances of cross-border coordination despite longstanding ethnic divisions.
Affinity Partners already encountered this loose activist network in Serbia in 2025. Its proposal with the UAE’s Eagle Hills to develop a Trump-branded hotel at Belgrade’s General Staff complex—bombed during NATO’s 1999 air campaign—became a focal point for thousands of protestors. As Brussels sought to navigate its widening differences with Washington, the European Parliament criticized the project in a resolution, and Affinity eventually abandoned the deal in December 2025.
A New Albanian Battleground
Attention is now on Albania, where Affinity Partners faces an even larger backlash. Prime Minister Rama has argued that the current protests are not a reflection of political dissent but are a result of a “‘hybrid war’ driven by external influences and digital manipulation” involving state-sponsored actors from countries such as Iran, according to Deutsche Welle. Meanwhile, other Albanian officials have pointed to Russia having links to the protests. Foreign influence cannot be ruled out entirely, with Albania’s hosting of the Iranian opposition group MEK remaining a source of tension with Tehran.
But these countries have reason to fear similar movements at home or among partners. China has little interest in additional regional instability, after a Chinese consortium’s renovation project of Serbia’s Novi Sad railway station, which collapsed in 2024, helped trigger nationwide protests.
The local protest networks built over decades with Western support have proven more influential than expected. Since 1995, USAID alone has invested more than $500 million in Albania, according to a 2025 report by the China-CEE Institute, and these civil society networks have proven resilient even after funding cuts. The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Albania, for example, evolved from USAID funding and has played a prominent role in covering the recent protests in Albania, alongside other USAID-connected organizations involved in the demonstrations.
The EU has supported Albania’s civil society infrastructure through funding programs such as LIFE and environmental organizations like EuroNatur, Birdlife International, and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, which have supported Albanian environmental groups such as the Protection and Preservation of Natural Environment in Albania (PPNEA) and EcoAlbania.
A decade ago, demonstrations like the Flaming Revolution might have attracted more direct backing from formal Western organizations and stronger political support. Today, however, the civil society networks nurtured by Western governments are now partly capable of setting their own agenda, prompting caution from Brussels. Meanwhile, Washington has withdrawn much of the support that once helped sustain them.
Rather than weakening these networks, the withdrawal of unilateral Western support may have accelerated their independence. As scholars Nikolaos Tsifakis and Anastasios Valvis observed in a study of civil society in neighboring Greece, “The diminution of state funding pressed CSOs (civil society organizations) to get reorganized, compete in a more demanding milieu, and increase their autonomy.”
The Regional Alliance to Defend the Nature of the Balkans, for example, is a coalition of more than 30 organizations that includes the Alliance of Ecological Organizations of Serbia and has given its full support to the Albanian activists and local communities. This reveals how protest campaigns are increasingly crossing the ethnic and national divisions that have long shaped Balkan politics, and that the “perspective of integration, one might say, is opening up,” states Aleksandar Matković, a researcher at the Institute for Economic Sciences in Belgrade.
Affinity Partners could still modify or abandon one of its major projects, easing pressure on the Albanian government. But the protests were never about a resort; instead, they reflect a broad coalition frustrated by corruption and the fact that foreign political and business interests are shaping Albania’s future. Operating in Europe has meanwhile given the movement legal protections and visibility that has been reinforced by a Western-trained regional activist network.
Albania’s current crisis has also been seen in Serbia and across the Balkans, with anti-hydropower campaigns having been planned in the region over the last decade. The growing independence of these movements has happened just as the US and EU interests diverge, creating a new political force that neither Washington nor Brussels finds easy to shape.
