The angry sides around Zvërnec

Now things are clearer.

The protests over what happened in Zvërnec have turned into protests against what is expected to happen there. The original anger was justified: a young protester was treated brutally. But the battle is no longer about him. It is now against the largest foreign-backed project ever offered to Albania — a project that brings together the United States and major Middle Eastern capital, giving Albania not only a financial boost, but also a stronger geopolitical shield.

So the police response, or Edi Rama’s response to the Zvërnec incident, no longer matters very much. Everyone who is angry now is being honest.

They are angry about the investment.

The angriest people are in Athens. The Greek government is angry. The Greek press is angry. Greek MEPs are angry. The opposition is angry. Even Beleri is angry.

Their anger has two layers. They complain about one thing, but have something else in mind. They say Zvërnec is Greek land and that the young man who was beaten was a discriminated member of the Greek minority. In reality, no one asked him his name before beating him, because thugs do not usually bother with that.

The truth is that Greece — its press, its government and its opposition, now united against Zvërnec — is not concerned about the Greek minority, because there is no Greek minority in Zvërnec.

It is concerned about the investment.

And it has reason to be. An investment that brings the Trump family to Vlora, together with billionaires from the Arab world, creates a new standard for Albania not only economically, but geopolitically.

Greece has also spent more than two years fighting the Vlora airport project through environmental reports from Brussels and the mobilisation of environmental groups. The government, with some arrogance, has overcome several of the obstacles placed in its way.

It is true that Vlora airport and the Zvërnec-Sazan investment package give Vlora far greater economic weight. But they do not move it to America or Qatar. They leave it where it is, while making Albania’s economy and territory stronger and harder to touch.

So Greece has every reason to be worried. Any normal country, serious about competition with its neighbours, would be worried.

Except us.

We are worried that this is happening in Albania and not in Greece.

The second group of angry people are the Zvërnec protesters in Tirana and Vlora. I do not want to confuse them with Greece. They are not working for Greece. They are Albanian.

They may never have been to Zvërnec and may never go there. But they now have a political cause. They have understood that this is a chance to build an ideological anti-capitalist left in Albania, and they are throwing everything at it.

At the centre of the protest is the “Together Movement”, with Arlind Qorri and Fatos Lubonja. They are the clearest, the least captured by others, and the most aggressive. The rest are supporting cast.

They are not Greece’s people. They are ours. And they are deeply convinced that this investment must be blocked as a cause against big capital. Every neo-Marxist force in the world has such a cause, and they should not be judged for it.

The only thing that does not work is when they act offended, as if someone is accusing them of being Greek agents.

No, they are not Greek agents.

Greece is with them in mind and spirit, and stands beside them. But they have nothing to do with Greece.

They are worse.

They want Albania worse off than Greece does, because that is where their ideology leads them. So do not worry about them. Let them protest, let them seek votes, and let them test themselves with this cause. Do not confuse them with Greece, because that also insults Greece’s own clarity in opposing this project.

The last concerned group are the SPAK prosecutors.

According to the official announcement, they have opened investigations into the ownership of the land and the legal steps through which the area was moved from protected zone status to protected landscape status with construction rights.

They are right to do that. On the land, all of Albania knows how property was transformed after the 1990s into the hands of strongmen, who then legitimised it under one government after another. As for the legal acts, I do not care how they find them. If someone broke the rules, let them face the law.

But one thing about their freezing order seemed deeply irresponsible.

They have placed an asset freeze on the Qatari company expected to invest, before it has even begun work and before it has spent a single cent. In other words, they have blocked the accounts of billionaires on the grounds that they are trying to invest in Zvërnec.

If this is not irresponsibility, then it is deliberate damage to a multibillion-euro project in Albania by the most advanced institution of the justice system — an institution that claims to protect us from petty thieves who damage our economy, while driving away foreign billionaires who are bringing €4 billion of their own money into the Albanian economy.

No one could do greater damage to the Albanian economy — not Greece, not Arlind Qorri, not Fatos Lubonja, neither the Lubonja of 1997 nor the Lubonja of 2026.

I hope this is not the “Greek nucleus” inside SPAK that arrests anyone who creates trouble for Beleri, because in that case we would owe it even more gratitude for proving that we really are bothering Greece.

The attempt to “arrest” billionaires before they have even arrived to invest is unprecedented in law, incomprehensible in international politics, and very bold for an institution that, whenever it commits repressive acts, usually justifies itself by saying it has spoken with the U.S. or EU embassy.

I do not know whom they spoke to on May 29. But blocking someone’s accounts before they have even invested is not justice.

At the very least, it is economic damage to Albania.

In reality, it is a political attack, like every other reaction provoked by the Zvërnec-Sazan investment project.

And prosecutors were not elected to decide Albania’s development policy.

Originally published in Albanian as: Të gjithë të zemëruarit e Zvërnecit