UN: ISIS Has Enough Firepower for 2-Year Fight

If the flow of weapons to ISIS was completely cut off today, the militants would still have enough weapons to battle on for up to two years, according to a United Nations report. The report says that while airstrikes can destroy the group's vehicles and heavier weapons, including tanks and US-made Humvees, it "cannot mitigate the effect of the significant volume of light weapons," and the group's arsenal is big enough to make it a threat even if it didn't hold territory, the Guardian reports. But while the group has seized Iraqi facilities used in Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, the report doubts the group has the "capability to fully exploit material it might have seized" and create chemical weapons.

ISIS is extremely well funded as well as heavily armed, notes the report, which calls on countries bordering territory held by the militants to "promptly seize all oil tanker trucks and their loads" entering and leaving to cut off one source of funding. In a speech yesterday, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who is a member of the Jordanian royal family, urged the Muslim world to denounce the "monstrous" crimes of ISIS, reports the New York Times. It is "disturbing how few to nonexistent have been the public demonstrations of anger in the Arab and Muslim worlds over the crimes being perpetrated in Iraq," he said. (More ISIS stories.)