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AFP / Stringer

Waiting for the Taliban

Tuesday 19 March 2019

"Around 3:40 each afternoon, Anastasia sits at a piano below a huge chandelier in a Qatar hotel and begins playing," writes David Harding, based in Doha.

"For the next 90 minutes, the Moroccan-style cavernous lobby echoes to songs including Beyonce's +Halo+, Adele's +Hello+, +A Whole New World+ from Disney's Aladdin and Henry Mancini's +Moon River+'."

"So far, so normal."

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  • AFP / Martin Bernetti

From Russia with... fun

Monday 2 July 2018

A 30-minute drive around the Russian town of Nizhny Novgorod squashed any unease Qatar-based correspondent David Harding had about his month-long stay in the country that has such dismal relations with the West at the moment.

"The welcome from the Russians has been fantastic," he writes. "For just a few weeks covering the World Cup has been the one thing people predicted it would not be: fun."

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AFP / Lionel Bonaventure

Qatar's year of isolation

Wednesday 6 June 2018

"If you must live in a country cut off by much bigger and powerful neighbours, with its main food supplies stopped overnight, threatened (maybe) with invasion and being turned into the world’s newest island (definitely), then it may as well be one of the world’s richest countries, Qatar," writes David Harding, Doha bureau chief.

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