Travelling through southern Albania on horseback in 1809, Lord Byron was so captivated by its mountains scored by rushing streams, its fertile plains and the hospitality of its inhabitants that he would later celebrate its unspoiled natural beauty in his poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage: ‘fairest in her features wild / Where nothing polish’d dares pollute her path’. When he reached Tepelena, on the Vjosa, the local ruler Ali Pasha, who later openly resisted Ottoman authority, gave him a lavish welcome.

In July 2021 Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, touring the same region on a yacht owned by a friend, British financier Nathaniel Rothschild, called at Sazan. With its strategic position between the Bay of Vlorë and Strait of Otranto (connecting the Adriatic and Ionian), this island became a forward post for the Venetian and later the Ottoman empire. Occupied by Italy and Germany during the second world war, it was a Soviet submarine base from the mid-1950s until 1961, when Albania’s dictator Enver Hoxha severed ties with Moscow.

Across the bay is the Vjosa-Narta protected area, including the Narta lagoon, a stretch of coastline and the mouth of the Vjosa, one of Europe’s last wild rivers. Lying on a major migration route between Africa and Europe, Vjosa-Narta’s lakes, sand dunes, pine forests and beaches attract some 250 species of birds, including pink flamingos and pelicans.

When the Trump-Kushners stopped to refuel in the Albanian port of Durrës, they were joined by Albania’s prime minister Edi Rama who told them of his hopes for tourism-led development in his country. Ivanka had spotted a great business opportunity: building luxury resorts with private beaches on Sazan and the mainland coast. A year later, Kushner revisited the Vlorë area, where the new Vlora International Airport was under construction. He met Rama again at Davos, and offered to invest in Albania; Rama promptly set about removing (…)

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