While the media still face many problems, as does the country itself, the creation of the media landscapes can be a powerful tool to counter forces of instability from dominating the country. Thus, if protected and utilized properly, the “Afghanistan Effect” can be one of the most powerful counterweights to a pre-2001 Taliban and Al Qaeda once again taking hold.

In his book, The Al Jazeera Effect, Philip Seib states that “Al Jazeera is a paradigm of new media’s influence,” similar to the way CNN had been the first to influence foreign policy throughout the world. Al Jazeera, Seib writes, goes further by using new media as a tool that ranges from democratization to terrorism, in addition to creating ‘virtual states’.

When Muslims around the world turn on the television, open the newspaper, or check out their favorite websites, they are more likely to see injustice, intolerance, and indignity coming from America the (Not Always So) Beautiful. Muslims can get outraged over the picture of Syed Wali Shah, a seven-year-old victim of a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan.

The US government’s failure to accord American Muslims the same respect, rights and privileges due to American citizens is nothing short of an ethical failure...the American insistence on profiling the Muslim minority at home is causing the US to lose its moral high ground, and with it, the soft power it once exerted.

The most successful cultural diplomacy strategy integrates people to people or arts/culture/media to people interactions into the basic business of diplomacy. The programs in Afghanistan, Egypt, and Iran all contribute to core goals of U.S. policy in those countries. Each succeeds by empowering local voices, rather than by conveying ideas through American emissaries.

Ms Khar and her government seem to be playing to the tune of the military establishment’s obsession with India and the inroads it has made by projecting ‘soft’ power in Afghanistan. That has allowed New Delhi to re-establish the historical friendship with Kabul, a development that has hardened the Pakistani GHQ’s approach to supporting Taliban proxies to control Afghanistan.

For the first time – ever – Afghanistan today played an international cricket match against...top-ranked neighbor Pakistan, with whom it has a relationship that is sometimes fraught with uneasiness, sometimes full of professions of brotherhood. The historic cricket match...both illustrated the love/hate relationship and helped fans on both sides of the border to forget, at least for a while, the tensions that exist between their countries.