Once a Cold War base that would have been the pride of James Bond villains, an Albanian island is set for an overhaul after Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump unveiled plans to revamp its wild beauty. The daughter of former US president Donald Trump and her partner want luxury villas to go up on the island of Sazan that for decades served as a garrison with bunkers, fallout shelters and a warren of tunnels designed to withstand a nuclear attack. The base epitomised the paranoia rampant during the four-decade rule of Albania's Stalinist strongman Enver Hoxha after World War II.
"The island was dotted with 2,840 bunkers with heavy machine guns and other automatic weapons," Ylli Mecaj -- a former soldier stationed at Sazan -- told AFP. "There were also kilometres of tunnels and underground installations, fallout shelters to house ammunition and food reserves," the 78-year-old retired naval officer added. During the socialist era, more than 2,000 people lived on the island base -- outfitted with a cinema, school, and hospital -- that was designed to last for months if cut off from the rest of the country.
The base fell into ruin following the collapse of the communist government in 1991. Dilapidated base The downfall of the communist regime set off years of chaos in Albania, with an economic collapse in 1997 sparking a brief civil war that saw military depots and armouries emptied, including on Sazan. For now, the island is peppered with wild mulberry and fig trees set against the se.