It was on June 5 last year that Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE came together to subject Qatar to an illegal siege.
Unwilling to bend over backwards, Qatar faced the blockade head on and now, almost a year down the line, is still going strong.
Despite little signs showing of the blockading countries’ antagonism towards Doha easing up, Qatar has, by common consent, coped remarkably well with life, according to a report by international business magazine Forbes.
In some ways, there is now more pressure on the four countries on the other side of the dispute to justify their policy of trying to freeze out Qatar or otherwise back down, the publication said.
The embargo saw the quartet cut off all economic and diplomatic ties with Doha amid claims and counter-claims of state-sponsored hacking, the promotion of fake news and support for terrorism.
There were some issues which Doha had to come to terms with straight away.
Its national airline, Qatar Airways, found that the 18 air corridors it had been using had been cut to just two overnight, as it was blocked from flying through Bahraini, Saudi or Emirati airspace.
As the IMF noted in a review of the Qatari economy in March, new trade routes were quickly established — with Oman, Turkey and Iran among others — and the banking system also adjusted, in part through a rise in government deposits.
Indeed, the dispute has pushed the Qatari authorities to make useful reforms, for example relaxing visa entry rules to encourage more visitors and diversifying their range of trading partners.
Other observers also say the country has coped well with what could have been a debilitating crisis.
“We’ve seen the resilience of the Qatari economy,” says Alastair Wilson, managing director for global sovereign ratings at Moody’s Investors Service, a credit ratings agency.
“At least from what we've seen so far, the impact is nowhere near as severe on the Qatar economy as we might have thought.”
Doha has also arguably played a cannier diplomatic game than its opponents.
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