Army Lt. Col. David E. Cabrera never made it home to Abilene, Texas, from Afghanistan. The father of four was killed in Kabul last October, when a suicide bomber with 1,500 pounds of explosives in a Land Cruiser slammed into the NATO armored bus in which Cabrera was riding. The suicide attack, which killed a dozen Americans and five others, was ordered and executed by the Haqqani clan, a criminal network of insurgents based in Pakistan that has proven lethal to hundreds of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

In September, the Haqqani network launched multiple coordinated attacks against the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul. That same month, in eastern Wardak province, a truck bomb detonated by Haqqani insurgents at a combat outpost injured more than 77 U.S. troops. Last month, the Haqqani network launched an 18-hour coordinated attack in four different provinces in Afghanistan. In eastern Afghanistan, from Kabul to the border of Pakistan, the group is responsible for at least 90 percent of all attacks against NATO and Afghan forces.