I’ve been following the recent protests in Albania but from a particular angle: as a participant in a similar wave of mass protests in Serbia. In 2024, I got three months of death threats after I published a scholarly article exposing controversial economic data related to a German-backed lithium mining project that threatened to tear up the Serbian countryside. Since some of the threats were written in German and followed a visit by that country’s then Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the case drew international attention. It is still under United Nations investigation and was covered by the Guardian, which helped draw attention to the massive statewide protests and subsequent repression in Serbia at the time. Previously, I was involved in internationalizing Serbia’s lithium struggles, linking activists and local communities from Portugal, Chile, Spain, Germany, and elsewhere with those in Serbia under what became known as the “Jadar Declaration.” It was these international links that triggered the threats in my case.

So, there’s good reason to speak up about what’s happening in Albania after the last month of protests against a destructive luxury resort project backed by Jared Kushner. Surely, not everyone shares this view. Decades of nationalism and war have created deep divisions between Serbia and Albania. Yet there are important similarities. Both governments are currently facing backlash from their citizens over ties to foreign-led development projects. This marks a shift in both countries: citizens are no longer identifying with their own states. Instead, both societies are experiencing a growing divide between citizens and state structures, which repress their own populations in defense of projects led by US and other global elites.

Like Serbia, Albania has experienced brain drain. It lost more than a million citizens through migration during the post-1991 transition to capitalism. Official UN estimates suggest that over 43 percent of the population now lives abroad. Both countries face mounting environmental conflicts, while political opposition is either ineffective or, in Albania’s case, sometimes aligned with extractive industries, while trade unions remain weak. Both countries are also becoming increasing focuses for US capital. Already prior to the Zvërnec luxury resort scheme, Kushner was involved in a real estate project in Serbian capital Belgrade proposing redevelopment of the General Staff Building — a partially destroyed site, until now preserved as a memorial to the 1999 NATO bombing. Plans to transform the site into a luxury development, reportedly linked to the Trump network, provoked public outrage and led to the project’s withdrawal.