Meet 3 members of Albania's 'Flamingo Revolution' trying to torpedo a Kushner-linked development

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Albania’s rallies against a coastal development project have garnered global attention, both for their connection to Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and because of their curious mascot.

The luxury project has two components: a small resort on the uninhabited island of Sazan and a coastal development in the nearby Narta Lagoon area, which is a wildlife reserve frequented by wetland species including flamingos.

Every evening for weeks, protesters have marched by the thousands in the capital Tirana, holding up cut-outs of flamingos. The result has been a nickname for their fledgling movement: “The Flamingo Revolution.”

Here are some of its members.

Fatma Paja, 28, lives in Tirana and runs a creative studio with her two sisters. She’s part of a group of artists who created the cut-out flamingos that have become a fixture at the nightly rallies.

“I have long used art as a means to express the injustices and dissatisfaction associated with everyday civilian life in Albania,” Paja told The Associated Press on Friday while painting a foam flamingo pink for that evening’s protest.

Paja’s group also organizes drawing and coloring activities for children during the protest, so that willing parents are able to join.

At the demonstrations, she leads chants through a loudspeaker. “Albania is not for sale!” she shouts, and “Don’t touch Narta!”

The project has sparked outrage because of the location's pristine nature and unique habitat that would be irreversibly devastated, according to environmentalists.

Citizens are demanding the project’s halt, citing a lack of transparency and concerns that in many similar projects environmental standards were not met.

“I am against a pro-elitist project that is blocking a fully protected area and destroying it,” Paja said. “It is a project that has no legal basis and has not been supported by any study on the damage it would cause to the environment and nature.”

She said she is optimistic, believing the protest has already produced results.

“This protest has motivated people to speak up and react,” she said, adding that, because it was not affiliated with political parties, it fostered trust and solidarity.

Although unaffiliated with a specific party, protesters are almost universally calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Arben Kola, one of the first protesters in the “Flamingo Revolution,” has worked as a tour guide for more than a decade. He takes visitors to historic and nature sites around Albania — including the area around the prospective development.

Tourism in Albania has seen a sharp increase in recent years, with people relishing the nation’s vast, undeveloped coastline. Among those who ​have been impressed were Kushner and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump. She explained on a podcast last month that they discovered the site of the planned development while on a friend’s boat and stopping for a swim.

It was yet another example, for Kola, of the government abusing its power, and he couldn’t stomach it any longer. He joined the nascent protest movement when it was just getting started.

“Albania is facing a high level of corruption, with the privatization and giveaway of land, beaches, valleys and rivers,” the 46-year-old said in an interview while leading a tour group through Tirana.

Albania’s anti-corruption agency has opened an investigation related to the project. The government says the land is privately owned, but rival claims over its privatization have emerged.

In an interview with the AP this month, Rama dismissed environmental objections as the result of misinformation and said the development was turning Albania from a country once ignored by investors into one “where the big capital wants to come and the big investors want to come.”

It is unclear exactly what Kushner’s investment role is in the project’s development, but Rama confirmed his involvement.

The prime minister said a formal environmental impact assessment has not started because the plan for the development has not been finalized. He said international architects and environmental specialists are still shaping the proposal.

Kola says it looks to him like the project is already moving full steam ahead. He is furious that work has already begun to clear land inside a nature reserve with excavators and other heavy machinery.

Today, Kola is one of the people who organizes the crowds by speaking to them on a loudspeaker. He’s still floored by just how much the demonstrations have grown.

“We didn’t believe the protest would reach this size,” Kola said, adding that people repeatedly ask him whether the movement will continue.

“It depends on the people,” he says.

Unlike most of Albania’s protests in over three decades of democracy, the young people on the streets this time are joined by an increasing number of retirees. Bujare Ishmi, 70, is one of them.

The former engineer attends the protest almost every night, wearing a placard that reads: “You have the power of crime, we have the power of truth.”

“Nona! Nona!” protesters chant when she arrives, welcoming her. The word is an Albanian term of endearment for an elderly female family member, and signals that she is the protest’s matriarch.

Ishmi said she has long dreamed of seeing a protest like this, describing Albania’s political system as a “half-hearted democracy.”

Her husband is a former political prisoner under Enver Hoxha’s four-decade rule, and she says neither of them is opposed to foreign investment. Their main concern is the lack of transparency.

Investment brings progress, “but the location must be known and the proper parameters must be maintained,” she said.

Designer Fatma Paja, center takes part in a protest against a coastal development project in western Albania linked to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump, in Tirana, Albania, Friday, June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Protesters take part in a rally against a coastal development project in western Albania linked to President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, in Tirana, Albania, Saturday, June 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Petrit Ishmi, right, and his wife, Bujare Ishmi, sit on a park ahead of a rally against a coastal development project in western Albania linked to President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, in Tirana, Albania, Saturday, June 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Arben Kola, a tour guide and one of the protesters against a coastal development project in western Albania linked to Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, is photographed during a rally in Tirana, Albania, Saturday, June 27, 2026. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Designer Fatma Paja handcrafts foam flamingos in order to be used at protests against a coastal development project in western Albania linked to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Donald Trump, in Tirana, Albania, Friday, June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched drone and missile attacks Sunday targeting Bahrain and Kuwait in response to U.S. airstrikes that hit the Islamic Republic, and threatened a “complete halt” could come to negotiations to end the war if Washington continues its attacks.

Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz without Iran's direct oversight sparked the crossfire now gripping the region. A multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Saturday that it would expand a route near Oman to allow for both inbound and outbound traffic, setting up a new flashpoint with Tehran.

Iran insists that after the war it alone must govern the strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf that once carried a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas. The global community has long considered the strait an international passageway, despite its sitting in Iran and Oman's territorial waters. In recent days, Tehran has twice attacked vessels going through a route on the Omani side of the strait backed by a United Nations agency.

The United States and Iran are still debating the terms of an interim peace deal, including issues such as getting ships through the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, removing U.S. blockades and sanctions, and addressing the future of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium. Under the memorandum of understanding signed earlier this month, the U.S. and Iran have 60 days to iron out the details. The strikes threaten to torpedo the deal before it can be finalized.

The Kuwaiti military said air defenses intercepted incoming Iranian drones and missiles Sunday morning, just after the U.S. strikes.

Kuwait, which hosts a major U.S. army base, said it had detected and intercepted two ballistic missiles and there were no reports of injuries or damage.

Bahrain's Interior Ministry said the Iranian strikes damaged a residential building near the international airport and no one was killed. The ministry released photos of an 8-story building, with the top floor completely destroyed, filled with rubble and its windows blown out.

Bahrain is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, whose base there came under repeated attack during the war. The damaged building on Sunday was not near the fleet's headquarters, in downtown Manama.

Bahrain’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement denouncing what it called “a dangerous escalation that reveals that what Tehran is doing is not a passing act, nor an isolated incident, but rather a deliberate approach and a systematic pattern of repeated aggression against the sovereignty of the kingdom, and the security of its citizens and residents.”

The strikes came after the US and Iran traded attacks over the weekend. The U.S. military’s Central Command said it struck Iranian military “surveillance infrastructure, communication systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities and minelayer capabilities” on Sunday, following an attack on a ship at sea early Saturday morning. That ship, the Panamanian-flagged tanker Kiku, carried crude oil for the state-run energy company of Qatar, a key negotiator between Iran and the U.S.

In a social media post, Trump said the U.S. had “struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” He warned of a point where the U.S. may no longer be able to be reasonable “and will be forced to militarily complete the job.”

“If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

The incident follows a similar back-and-forth that occurred just days prior, when an Iranian drone struck a merchant vessel off the coast of Oman on Thursday, and the U.S. military retaliated with strikes

The Guard claimed responsibility for both attacks, saying it targeted Al Asad Air Base in Kuwait.

“Let the enemy know that violating the ceasefire ... will lead to a complete halt of ongoing processes,” the Guard added.

The Guard, which controls Iran's ballistic missile arsenal, answers only to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and is thought to be wielding even greater influence now in the Islamic Republic.

The U.S. military said that “Iran had a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement” but “elected not to” when its forces attacked the Kiku.

According to ship-tracking websites, the Kiku left a Qatari oil field in the middle of the Persian Gulf earlier in the week and was bound for a port in the United Arab Emirates that sits on the Gulf of Oman, just on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz.

It appeared to be attempting to use a route established near the coast of Oman, serving as an alternative to the route sanctioned by Iran that runs through its own waters.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, left, and Bahrain's King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa share a word after their meeting, at Al-Sakhir Palace near Zallaq, Bahrain Thursday, June 25, 2026. (Eric Lee/Pool Photo via AP)