Traffic is back, schools have reopened and general confidence is returning to society across the country.
One international observer identified what could be termed as a set of soft signals of recovery in the UAE when speaking to The National this month: patrons queuing for tables and service at restaurants and coffee shops, as well as traffic jams coagulating on the nation’s road networks at rush hour.
He suggested they offered the sense that the country could bounce back quickly after the Iran war, which is now locked in a state of extended ceasefire. Anthony Gutman of Goldman Sachs International also told The National’s Manus Cranny that he found the UAE to be “very consistent” with how it was prior to the end of February.
Those soft signals of recovery and consistency are evident despite the ship seizures and maritime interceptions that have been made by both the US and Iran this week in and around the blocked Strait of Hormuz, as well as a lack of clarity regarding when conflict-resolution talks will resume in Islamabad.
Other positive indicators might also include the return of in-person learning at schools this week and the presence of yellow busesbuzzing around the nation’s neighbourhoods to collect students and ferry them to school. Only the most emotionless observer would have been unmoved by the pictures of joyful students and teachers returning to classrooms on Monday after several weeks of remote learning.
Distance learning, imposed as a matter of necessity and not choice, is often unfairly characterised as an inferior form of education, but its reintroduction in March did underscore another strand of national readiness and adaptation. As Yasar Jarrar’s excellent column noted in these pages earlier this month, remote learning also provides the platform for important life lessons to be gained by partially replicating what students might encounter in the hybrid workplaces and university lecture halls and libraries of their post-school years.
More generally, calendars are filling up again with events, counterbalancing the sudden postponements and cancellations in March and early April, indicating a return to normal, even if some of the signals are harder to decipher.
We all find pockets of our existence to be different to how they were before February 28, whether that is in individual movement or economic activity. There is a personal balance sheet of lost opportunities, changed routines and deferred appointments to be reconciled. A confused fog can easily settle, for instance, when learning somewhere familiar is unexpectedly closed for a period of refurbishment, adding to the accumulation of unquantifiable uncertainty that has been a feature of the springtime.
A full reopening of maritime trade routes and a precisely defined cessation of hostilities will ultimately prove to be the best antidotes to lingering anxiety, although the scar tissue will still take time to heal.
The bigger picture is also worth reflecting upon. The UAE has demonstrated remarkable strength in neutralising threats posed by Iranian aggression and has been clear in its messaging about what the future should look like. All of that helps add to the sense that the country will move quickly away from the shock of such unexpected turbulence.
Recovery is rarely achieved in a straight-line, however, even if history is written in a way to suggest it does. It requires perseverance, strength of will and, yes, resilience – which may be in contention for word of the year, such has been the frequency of its use recently. Nevertheless, it remains an appropriate description for what has been evident for the past two months.
That sense of fortitude is supplemented by the knowledge that the UAE economy has a particular ability to weather storms, learning from the crises of previous decades to prepare for the future. That much has been evident since the country’s foundation years. The International Monetary Fund said of the UAE this week that there is “capacity in the system to react … and to address very quickly the impact of those shocks” and broader disruption. Another expert noted that the currency swap call this month is best interpreted as a call for confidence, rather than a call for help.
We began the 2020s with two words – new normal – defining the era, and with watchwords like adaptation and mitigation being guiding principles for the individual.
It seems clear now that this term may come to represent the entire decade itself on an international level. The concept has floated beyond an individual’s responsibilities to society and become emblematic of our times.
Geopolitical uncertainty is unlikely to subside suddenly and definitively. Only those who can recalibrate with clarity and act with precision are likely to prevail. Confidence, a fickle friend at the best of times, will need continuous management.
The UAE’s work to build capacity and capability into its systems over the long term has been on near-permanent view over the past eight weeks, working to ensure those soft signals of recovery harden into permanence.
