Unit 910 - ESO
Unit 910 - Hezbollah's External Security Organization (ESO)
Hezbollah's elite and strictly compartmented clandestine unit is commanded by Talal Hamia, and functions as the far-reaching strategic arm of Hezbollah and Iran. Its purpose is to serve as a deterrent against the West and against Israel in particular. In the past, the unit was headed by Mughniya himself.
The unit is composed of specialized units, operating jointly both from administrative and operative aspects, and is strictly compartmented from all other units within the organization.
The unit is composed of a small group of operatives, mainly Lebanese Shiites whose families were not born in Lebanon, some of which even hold authentic foreign identity documents allowing them to travel across the world under false identities and tourist or business cover stories.
Their frequent travels abroad are explained away to their family members, neighbors and friends as regular business trips, whereas they are in fact members of units of killers mounting various terror activity throughout the world. As opposed to other religious Lebanese Shiites, the operatives who travel abroad shave their beards, do not visit mosques, and consort with local women in the areas where they carry out their missions.
The operatives of this unit undergo a long and complex process of security training until they are formally authorized as operatives, including field security, working under cover, sabotage techniques, as well as camouflage techniques in case they are required to escape from any given country.
In order to facilitate its activities worldwide, the unit establishes ties with elements who support Hezbollah and are permanent residents abroad, and uses these elements for logistic and operational purposes.
The majority of these local facilitators come from Lebanese families that emigrated from Lebanon years ago, while others are natives who have converted to Islam or Shi'a Islam, and are eager to contribute to the "struggle" while accepting the risks involved in providing support to a terrorist organization.
Hezbollah makes cynical and manipulative use of the elements who provide them with support, and as a result of this, the majority of Hezbollah's failures to carry out terror attacks have ended in such a way, that while the operatives were warned ahead of time and exfiltrated, the network of facilitators paid the price by serving long prison sentences.
The operational capabilities exhibited by this unit are indicative of the callous disregard for the consequences of the terror activity it mounts, and therefore throughout the years it has used enormous quantities of explosives, which, regardless of the chosen targets, have hurt – or would have hurt, had they been successful – many innocent people.
The unit's activity is characterized by a long-term perspective, striving to achieve significant achievements as opposed to fast and limited achievements.
