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Clinton specifically faulted the US decision to stay on the sidelines of the insurgency against Syria�s President Bashar al-Assad as opening the way for the most extreme rebel faction, the Islamic State. �The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad � there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle � the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,� Clinton told the Atlantic.