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Escalating the war: the West’s responsibility for the slaughter in Syria
Arming the Syrian rebel forces only exacerbated and prolonged the civil war, says IAN SINCLAIR

DESPITE the carnage and intense anger created by the US-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan, many prominent commentators and politicians repeatedly pushed for the West to step up its intervention in Syria.

In 2012 Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow for Middle East security at the Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote an article titled “Arm Syrian rebels to enable [a] political solution.”

Three years later human rights activist Peter Tatchell was campaigning for what he called “Syrian democratic forces” to be given anti-aircraft missiles and Kurdish forces to be supplied with “heavy artillery, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles against Isis.”

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