Tirana - Nejat Society

Albanians Say No to the Economy of ‘Yes’

Nejat Society — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 07:49:43 +0000

In the last two weeks, the streets of Albania’s capital, Tirana, have been filled with thousands of flamingos — or, rather, cardboard cutouts of the cotton candy-colored birds that have come to be the unofficial mascot of massive protests against Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government. At issue is a deal the government struck with one of Jared Kushner’s companies to develop a previously untouched island off the country’s south coast into a massive luxury resort, bulldozing a nature reserve in the process.

In his 12-year run as prime minister, Rama has tried to drag his nation out of the depths of postcommunist depression through an economic policy of saying yes to just about any development that could bring in revenue, or what he calls “strategic investors.” Gulf and Western-backed projects have been given expedited approvals and government support. “With no industrial, financial or human capital to offer on the global market, the only thing left to sell is nature,” the Albanian author Lea Ypi wrote this week in The Guardian.

But the Kushner project is just one in a long line of unsavory and unpopular deals Rama has undertaken in a bid to curry favor with Western partners as he hammers home his “Accession before 2030” agenda — the campaign to join the European Union — which has been a key part of maintaining power.

Ivanka Trump may have been able to swim up to an island in the Mediterranean and scramble ashore barefoot, but thousands of migrants seeking refuge on European shores are now being warehoused in Albania, thanks to a five-year deal Rama signed with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, that was roundly criticized by human rights groups but praised as “out-of-the-box” thinking by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the EU Commission. In exchange for holding up to 3,000 people at a time while their asylum claims are being processed, Albania, which has lost 1.2 million of its own citizens to migration, received not much more than an assurance of Italy’s support in its EU bid.

In 2013, the United States came knocking at Rama’s door with a direct request: Take on the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. The Balkan nation had successfully destroyed its own a few years earlier, and the U.S. couldn’t find another NATO country to play host to the more than 1,000 weapons, which included mustard gas and sarin gas. The deal was scuttled after it was leaked to the press and citizens complained, but the heart was willing, as it were.

It wasn’t the first time Albania was asked to take on an outsize risk as a favor for its supersized ally. Rama also expanded an arrangement, initially negotiated before his time, to host members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq — an Iranian movement that opposed both the Pahlavi monarchy and the Islamic Republic. Though it didn’t garner the same kind of public reaction the proposed chemical weapons dump did, some Albanians questioned why their country was taking on security risks for a conflict thousands of miles away. Their fears were confirmed when Iran began launching cyberattacks on critical government systems, including a crippling outage in 2022. The attacks haven’t let up; the most recent was in March.

In the past, opposition to Rama’s gambits was modest. Now thousands of people are on the streets with a single, unified slogan: “Albania is not for sale.” The growing disenchantment with the notion that the only thing the nation has to give is its land at bargain basement prices could be a tipping point for Rama and his economy of “yes.”

By Erin Clare Brown, New Lines Magazine

The post Albanians Say No to the Economy of ‘Yes’ appeared first on Nejat Society.

Middle East expert to DW: MEK has deep legitimacy problems

Nejat Society — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 08:59:49 +0000

Following the protests in Iran, German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) investigated the role of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) in the protest.
Elona Elezi, the Albanian correspondent of DW reporting from Tirana, interviewed a prominent Middle East Expert Andreas Kreig on the MEK as an Iranian opposition based in “a fortified camp in Manze, a small village in central Albania near the capital Tirana.”
Presenting a brief on the history of the MEK, Elezi develops the report by Kreig’s opinions on Iran, the protests and its oppositions including the MEK.
Andreas Kreig, the senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London, Royal College of Defence Studies, tells DW that in general the Iranian opposition is “fragmented”.
“Where the opposition stands is best understood as fragmentation rather than absence,” said Kreig, adding “inside Iran, collective action remains largely leaderless and networked: local mobilization, social ties, workplace dynamics, and university ecosystems produce burst of coordinated protest without an integrated national command structure.”
“Outside Iran the diaspora remains influential in narrative shaping and morale, but it is organizationally divided and often distrusted by people inside the country who fear both manipulation and a post-collapse vacuum,” said Andreas Krieg.
For Middle East expert Andreas Krieg, however, “when it comes to MEK, it is important to separate perceived reach from real on-the-ground traction.”
“The organization is disciplined, media-savvy, and able to generate noise, lobbying pressure and messaging volume abroad. However, it has deep legitimacy problems among many Iranians because of its history, internal-control allegations, and its long exile posture- factors that limit its ability to act as unifying opposition vehicle inside the country. It is why claims that it functions as a foreign ‘trojan Horse’ resonate.”
“The MEK is easy for multiple actors to instrumentalize in the information space, including anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel. But the practical effect is more often reputational. It gives the regime a convenient foreign proxy frame. But it does not at all have any role to play in leading these protests.” Said Krieg.

Elona Elezi, DW

The post Middle East expert to DW: MEK has deep legitimacy problems appeared first on Nejat Society.

Maryam Rajavi went to Tirana from France.‎

Nejat Society — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 10:00:49 +0000

She is staying at the Tirana’s International Hotel and has meetings with top and senior officials; ‎Meetings with European authorities have also been arranged.‎
The recent presence of Maryam Rajavi in Tirana, in addition to foreign visits, seems to have no ceremonial reasons and it focuses more on the internal issue of the organization and organizes the status of its members.
Also, another reason that eliminates the integrity of the organization is Bolton’s promise to overthrow the Iranian regime before the fortieth anniversary of the revolution.

Because of the failure to realize this, the collapse of the system in the eyes of the members of the organization at Camp Ashraf 3 is a very far-reaching dream and this has caused internal organizational challenges, and the organization is trying to justify this issue.

The post Maryam Rajavi went to Tirana from France.‎ appeared first on Nejat Society.