President Carter, Camp David and the Albanian Connection

By Gary Kokalari

Americans are now mourning the death of Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States States.   As American politicians and the media reflect on the  Carter Presidency, it's generally thought that Carter’s most important accomplishment was brokering the Camp David Accords that brought Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat together for peace negotiations at the Camp David government retreat located outside of Washington.  For their efforts at forging a peace agreement at Camp David, Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. In 2002, President Carter was awarded  the Nobel Peace Prize for his work finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, including the Camp David accords.  

Although not well known to the public, working behind the scenes to facilitate and encourage Anwar Sadat's participation at the Camp David negotiations was Kamal Adham, an Albanian.  Kamal was the son of Ibrahim Adham  with roots in Shkodra, and he had a half sister, Iffat, who married King Faisal of Saudi Arabia and became known as Queen Iffat.   Being the brother-in-law and right hand of King Faisal, Kamal  Adham became one of the most powerful - and wealthiest - men in the Middle East. He was also chief of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency and considered one of the CIA's most important contacts in the Arab states.   So, Anwar Sadat had many reasons to respect Kamal Adham, not the least of which was the fact that Kamal was his key liaison to the financial largesse of the al-Saud family, and they maintained a close relationship through the years.  

In 1996, with the encouragement of Sali Berisha,  I traveled to Jeddah for a meeting at Kamal Adham‘s office that was arranged for me by a mutual friend in Saudi Arabia. Kamal was emotional about the idea of visiting Albania and enthusiastic about trying to help the country move forward as it was emerging from communism.  I then flew from Jeddah to Tirana to try to work out the details of a visit to Albania by Kamal Adham.   Unfortunately, Berisha demonstrated his bi-polar, unethical character when he did an about face and sabotaged that opportunity, which could have had enormous economic benefits for Albania. Instead, Berisha was busy promoting pyramid schemes, and Albanians know all too well how that story ended.   

Kamal Adham was also a major shareholder in the Bank for Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) and First American Bank, and through these investments he had  business relationships with Jimmy Carter and Bert Lance, a banker from Georgia and a  former senior official of the Carter administration.  However, with BCCI, Kamal Adham became entangled in a scandal that ultimately required him to pay a $100 million fine to the U.S. government. But that's another story...